What is a Meta Description Tag?
Syntax:
<META NAME="description" CONTENT="Your page description goes here.">
Summary:
The Meta Description Tag is a written summary that describes the contents of a given web document. It should contain one or more occurrences of your primary (and optionally
secondary) target optimization keywords. Refer to
SEO Informer
for current recommendations.
Advantages:
Considered by some engines when determining ranking. Helps to entice users to click-through
to your site.
Disadvantages:
Can give away your SEO strategy to nosy competitors. This is particularly true when
keywords are proper-cased.
Tip #1:
If this tag is left empty, most search engines default to using the first 25 words
of the page. Since this can often contain navigation and other useless junk, this
will not likely provide a strong marketing piece to search engine users.
Tip #2:
Meta descriptions are often displayed in search engine results, making it an important
tag from a marketing standpoint. Since users are often presented with many relevant
options, it is important that your meta description captures the user's interest.