Our previous post discussed the keyword meta tag. This time, we’ll tackle the description meta tag.

The description tag is a 25-30 words or so (don’t obsess) explanation of what your site or a particular page is about … your elevator speech. Be clear and concise. For the home page, tell what you do and where. For interior pages, tell the most important subject covered on that page.

The meta description is most important when the term a searcher queries in Google is included in your tag. In that case, all or part of your meta description will be shown as the snippet on the Google SERP (search engine results page). Usually, the engines utilize a few words on either side of the term where it appears on the page, and the snippet MAY result in a meaningful sentence. Oftentimes, it doesn’t. So if you include the most important keyword phrases for the page in your tag, you can control the snippet. Who doesn’t want that?

Here’s an example: The meta description for partner site Dobies Healthcare Group is:

<meta name=”description” content=”Dobies Healthcare Group, a health care marketing agency in Kansas City, has provided expert advice and marketing communications and advertising services to the healthcare industry for 17 years.” />

As the nearby screen capture shows, a search on Google for: “health care marketing agency in Kansas City” returns a Google maps listing for Dobies Healthcare Group, and then the standard listings. In the No. 1 position is Dobies.com, with the snippet being:

“Dobies Healthcare Group, a health care marketing agency in Kansas City, has provided expert advice and marketing communications and advertising services to …”

… which is a slightly truncated version of our exact meta description. And  the queried keywords are bolded for an added bonus.

By placing the keywords for which we want to be ranked directly into our meta description, we’ve achieved a better snippet for our services than Google would have done for us. We’ll next cover the meta title tag.