META Description

Telling Search Engines what you want them to do, Part 2

The META Description tag on your web page is a way to tell search engines what description you want them to use on your listing, and helps with your keyword relevancy. Unfortunately, more and more engines no longer rely on META Tags. However, some still use them, so you should certainly pay attention to them.

The META Description tag goes between the <HEAD> and </HEAD> tags on your web page. It looks like this:

<meta name="description" content="This is a description of my site">

When creating your META tags, you should be very descriptive, but don't make it too long. Be sure to use keywords that are important to you in your description.

Keyword Weight

Most engines that read your meta tags will consider keywords more important if there are fewer overall keywords in the tag, and if they are closer to the beginning. Look at these two examples:

Site A:
<meta name="description" content="Fly Fishing in Alaska for King Salmon, Rainbow Trout Coho Salmon and much more">

Site B:
<meta name="description" content="Fishing supplies and other products for the dedicated fisherman, including fly fishing">

Of the two sites, if an engine reads the META tags, Site A will tend to do better for the key phrase 'fly fishing' than site B, because the term occupies more of the overall description than in site B, and because it is the first thing found in the description.

Keyword Lists in a Description

Repeating keywords is a big no-no. Many engines consider this spamming, and humans are unlikely to click on your listing if they see this. For example:

<meta name="description" content="Fishing, fly fishing, salmon, trout, yada yada yada">

This is likely to get you ignored or banned.

Do it in AddWeb
AddWeb's Page Builder allows you to edit your META tags on all of your pages very quickly and efficiently.

 

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