Meta Tags - Description & Keywords

The Evolving Meta Description

For many of the early years of ‘Search Engine Optimisation’ the so called ‘meta tags’ of a web page were the focus of a large part of the effort. It was believed that by simply loading all of the keywords that you wanted a web page to rank for into the Meta Keywords tag this would be sufficient. It was also commonplace to fill the Meta Keywords tag with the same keyword or key phrase repeated many times.

Since this activity posed a threat to the quality of search engine results and the Meta Tags in the case of many pages bore no relation to the actual text / information content of the pages, this became an obvious problem area. Search engine algorithms (e.g. Google) were changed to place little or no importance on the Meta Keywords tag in terms of ranking a page, and these ‘stuffing’ techniques fell under the ‘black hat’ umbrella as far as the search engines were concerned.

As far as Google’s public comments go e.g. by Matt Cutts, the Meta Keywords tag is still unlikely to be one of the 200 or so page ‘signals’ which carries any of the real ranking weight.

Aside form the Meta "Keywords" tag, what about its traditional neighbour the Meta "Description"?

In modern search engine rankings in Google’s natural listings, apart from the feature which shows links to individual pages within the website for some top ranking websites, each listing in the search engine results is made up of 3 lines of information. The 1st line is the contents of the Document / Page Title tag, the 3rd line is the URL, but the 2nd line will often be the Meta Description from the web page.

This is ‘often’ but not always the case because Google has a system in place which allows a kind of discretionary approach to the Meta Description.

Guidelines for the Meta Description

A Meta Description should at least give a summary of what that individual page is all about. Each page should therefore have a significantly different Meta Description since each page should contain different content.

The Meta Description will not contribute to the ranking position of a web page in the search engine results. Since it is actually displayed in the search engine results however, it will be visible to search engine users and its contents can help decide whether yours or a competitor’s link is actually clicked on. This means that the primary effect of the Meta Description will be on your click through rates.

If you don’t add a Meta Description to your pages, or if your Meta Description is the same for all of your pages, or if a Meta Description is not sufficient or accurate, Google will display its own version of a Meta Description for your web page in the search engine results known as a ‘snippet’. This will be prepared from the relevant areas of text content in the page, or perhaps from the Description submitted to the Open Directory Project website (dmoz.org).

When it comes to Meta Descriptions, it’s therefore important to include accurate ones in each of your web pages, and to bear in mind that they will not only be visible to human search engine users, but that they could also help to decide whether somebody clicks on your link in preference to a competitor’s.