The description meta tag on your website’s pages, while not nearly as important for actual search engine rankings as the Title Tag, can still dramatically improve the amount of people that actually click the link to your site that appears in the search engine rankings. When someone does a keyword search in many search engines and/or directories, they will see the title of your site then below that is the description of your site taken from the description tag you place on your site itself. This description is your opportunity to sell your site to the visitor.

On the importance of description meta tags Ben Pfeiffer advises, “Descriptions are important. Need to be unique for each page and contain target keywords to encourage search engines to pull snippets from it. Make it interesting!” Think of your description tag as the above fold headline of a newspaper. If the headline is interesting you might pick up the paper and check it out. If the headline is dull, you walk on by and pay it little attention.

The use of keywords in your description tag is also very important because many search engines and directories like Google and Yahoo will bold the keywords that people are actually searching for. If you are using your keywords in your description tag this bolding will help draw eyes to it and encourage them to read it.

When writing your description tag it is a good idea to write something useful, descriptive and keyword rich. Neil Patel summed it up best when he wrote, “More than using keywords within meta description tags, I feel it is more important to have unique meta description tags on every page. It seems lots of people like using generic descriptions or none at all.” If most people choose to use generic description tags or none at all, your site will stand out and your unique description will draw views and clicks if you take the time to create one.

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