After the previous post about how to optimise a title tag I thought it would be a good move to talk to you about the Meta Tags and Meta Description as I had mentioned them.

If you cast your mind back, you would have already seen the Meta Description in action on the example I presented when talking about a good example of a title tag. Lets take a look again below:

A Decent Example of a Meta Description

As you can see, below the title tag is a description as to what that page contains. You really need to start thinking of this as your advert copy. This, along with the title, is designed to compel people to want to click on your result over everyone else’s.

The good news is, this part of on page optimisation isn’t really taken into consideration too much as a ranking factor – so you now have more freedom when it comes to making it compelling rather than just thinking of SEO.

The above example could be better – that’s for sure. It doesnt quite read naturally and you can tell they have focused mainly on the SEO side of things rather than making it ad copy. If I was writing it, I may have gone for something like this:

Buy Men’s t-shirts online with free delivery at Republic. New t-shirts added weekly from the best designer brands. Going out, summer, & fashion shirts. Buy Now.

Notice how I include “free delivery”? Now of course, if they have free delivery, why not let the searchers know up front. That may well receive more clicks than listings that don’t mention it – even if they do provide it.

I feel that at least reads better, whilst still including the keywords that will be bolded. I’m sure it can still be improved apon further, but I’m sure you get the jist. Get practicing with yours. Check out your competitors to see what they are doing right/wrong and make it better.

What Should My Meta Description Contain?

Just like the question about what your title tag should contain, there is no one answer. It depends on the individual page, but I would keep in mind the above information. Remember, it’s your ad copy. You need to make people want to click on your result as it is exactly what they are after above anyone else’s listing on that page.

Try and include the main and secondary keywords if you can as well as descriptive content about that page and what visitors can expect to find when they arrive. A call to action is always a good idea. Things such as “Play now”, “Order today”, “Buy now”, and even “Click here” would be good to include on the end of the description.

How Long Should My Meta Description Be?

As with the title tag – each search engine displays a different character length, with Google displaying up to 156. As I advised on the title tag, it would be best to aim for 156 so that it can be displayed on Google without cut off. If you want to include more try and structure it in a way where the searcher has to discover the rest of the content. Provide them with a cliff hanger. Although from a personal point of view, I prefer aiming for 156 characters to make everything look nice and tidy.

What Does the Meta Description Look Like?

From an HTML point of view, here is the code for the Meta Description:

<meta name=“description” content=“Men’s t-shirts online at Republic new t-shirts added weekly. Tops from the best designer brands; going out, summer, polo, fashion tops and t-shirts buy now.”>

You just replace the part in speech marks with what you would like it to say. As there are so many ways people edit their websites I’m afraid I can’t go into the “how’s”.

If you weren’t to include a custom Meta Description, the search engines will try and generate one for you via your content. Sometimes it’s not a bad job, but other times it’s a mess as it is picking up pointless information such as “search”, “log in”, “my account” which may appear on your page. My advice? Don’t leave it to be generated by the search engines.

Meta Keywords

OK, so I think that has pretty much covered the use and optimisation of the Meta Description – so check through your own ones as you may be losing visitors!

As for the meta keywords, this will be short as quite frankly, there isn’t much to say about them! This meta tag isn’t visible to the end user unless they check out your source code.

They used to actually be a factor in how your site could rank, and this unfortunately led to people stuffing keywords in the tag in order to rank for completely unrelated terms. There was a spate of adult sites ranking for searches that kids would look for as they were putting keywords such as “Barbie”, “My Little Pony” etc in the meta keywords tag. Not a great advertisement for the internet at that time.

Well thankfully they have sorted that out. Google doesn’t pay attention to the tag anymore and Yahoo/MSN/Bing pay slight attention to it. So, seeing as its looked at (and possibly by smaller search engines) I would suggest you still use it but don’t bust a gut over it.

All you need to do is include a selection of of keywords/phrases to help reinforce what your page is about. I personally recommend a maximum of 8 different words/phrases and keep it generic. Don’t put your “money” keywords in there as this data can be scraped and used for keyword research.

What Do Meta Keyword Look Like?

Here is the HTML for the Meta Keywords tag:

<meta name=“keywords” content=“Republic, fashion, clothing, apparel, denim, jeans, republic shop, online store, Best jeanswear, join the republic, best denim, Fenchurch, bench, soul cal, fabric of life, g-star, only, vila, schott, drunknmunky, duck and cover, fly53, miso, little miss, del mar, mens, womens, accessories, combats, tops, crops, t-shirts, jackets, swimwear, shirts, skirts, knits”>

Just place your words/phrases after the Content=” section and you’re good to go. Remember, seeing as this isn’t visible to the end user, it doesn’t have to read properly. It can literally be a string of words seperated by commas.

In Closing

So there you have it – a good insight into how to use Meta Descriptions properly in order to help people decide to choose your listing over anyone elses. Remember – always keep that in mind. Would you click on your result? Why not show your friends or family a results page without title and URL and ask which one they would choose if they searched for a particular keyword.

That would be a great insight as you would be learning from people that don’t have a direct involvement with your industry/niche/ Give it a go. I’d love to hear the results.

As always, get involved with the comments below – I’d love to hear if this post opened your eyes or indeed made you cry tears of boredom.

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