How To Make Searchers Click – The Meta Description Tag
I was recently asked how to control the text that gets displayed along with each link in the search results. This is a good question, this text is your chance to tell searchers exactly what to expect from your site and entice them to click on the link and visit your page. The highlighted yellow text in the image below is an example of this text at work:
So how does Google generate this text? One of two ways.
1: Most often, Google grabs this text from the meta description of the page. The meta description is a snippet of code placed in the <head> of your website. You will have the best results from writing a clear sentence or two that accurately describes your page or article. Keep the length of your meta description short since there will be a limited number of characters displayed in the search results and adding additional keywords to the meta description wont give you any extra value. Each page of your website should also have its own unique meta description. Here's a snapshot of the highlighted code showing the meta description of this Phoenix page:
To add a meta description to your website, insert the following code into the <HEAD></HEAD> section of your website:
<META NAME="Description" CONTENT="Your descriptive sentence or two goes here.">
2: Google will sometimes display 1 or 2 sentences directly from the content of the website. This will happen when a website either does not have a meta description OR if the keywords of the search phrase are in the content but not the meta description. At that point Google will grab the text from the sentences surrounding the keywords in the body of the website to display.
Labels: Google, SEO Strategies, Website Design
Del.icou.us
Digg
Facebook
Newsvine
My Web
