31Mar

A Good Meta Description is Hard to Find

When I look over a web site from a professional standpoint, I'm primarily concerned about three things — the user experience, the aesthetic design, and how well the site is optimized for search engines.

Of the three, I'm regularly surprised at how little attention is paid to SEO, especially the basics.

Everyone knows that the <title> tag is the most important element on a web page for SEO, right?

But what of the meta description, which provides the text summary for each result (the snippet)? It's far more important than many web designers seem to think.

Certainly, the <title> tag, as it forms the clickable link for a search engine result, is key to get right.

However, the snippet provides an opportunity to deliver a targeted call-to-action to the searcher that supports and builds on the text of the main link. It can also differentiate your result from those around it.

Not writing a good meta description — one that at least summarizes the content on the page — means that you're giving up free traffic from organic search engine rankings.

What's all the more surprising to me is that many notable web design-related sites ignore or incorrectly implement the meta description.

For example, the latest A List Apart article (on findability — the irony) has no meta description, even though a summary is provided on the page (although it makes the mistake of being clever rather than useful).

The same is true for Vitamin, Freelance Switch, Graphic Define Magazine, and Boxes and Arrows.

What is especially interesting to me is that these sites are all magazine-format and probably receive a significant proportion of their traffic from search engines. You'd think that they would want to optimize their articles for these important sources of traffic.

Fortunately, SitePoint bucks the trend by actually using meta descriptions, and descriptive ones at that, although they tend to be rather long winded.

Just to drive the point home, here's how that ALA article on Findability looks on Google:

A List Apart Google search engine result: before rewriting

Other than the A List Apart name, a searcher has no idea whether this article is going to be relevant or useful.

Here's how that result looks after spending a couple of minutes rewriting the meta description (based on a more relevant sentence I pulled from the article):

A List Apart Google search engine result: after rewriting

Imagine how good that call-to-action could be if you spent a whole 5 minutes writing and copy editing it. Hopefully I've made my point.

A lot of the business of creating and managing web sites is about getting the basics right. The meta description is one of those basics that you can't afford to ignore.

Posted on: March 31, 2008 | 19 Comments

19 Comments Posted

I have read a few articles that say Google pays little attention to the description meta-tag now and generates the description from the page content based on the search term.

I was under the assumption that the meta-tag's main use now is for human edited directories and listings to quickly understand what the page/site is about for their own use.

However I still take some time over the description tags (just in case) :)

1. Posted by David on April 01, 2008

David — I'm not sure where you read that but as far as I'm aware it's not true. Just do a Google search for web design blog and look at the snippet for the first result. That's straight out of my meta description.

2. Posted by Christian Watson on April 01, 2008

Google auto generates a description that "they" feel would be best suited for your search. It can be from many sources, such as DMOZ, your description tag, or straight from your page; whatever would be most relevant to the search..

3. Posted by Cleveland SEO on April 01, 2008

Yes I have read that the different search companies have started doing their own indexing as the meta tags are getting too populated and over used to correctly index all the sites out there now.

4. Posted by Sweet Emotions Floral on April 02, 2008

I'm in agreement with Cleveland SEO - in that the meta description augments the main page copy, and should describe in well for humans, but that search engines can't afford to lend it too much weighting because, just like the meta keywords some years back, it could just be a receptical for keyword spamming. Content is King; use the meta description as you suggest - for humans and humans only. Getting it in the results is one thing; enticing people to click on it is what the meta description's good at, though spamming means its SEO days are numbered.

5. Posted by Dave Haygarth on April 02, 2008

I was thinking about this very fact for two of y recent website releases and I was wondering whether it read the description or the content...

I am thinking that it would not harm any body and if it even only helps one or two people to click on your website, its worth it. Plus do not forget some people actually do search via other means than google, not many but some do.

6. Posted by Jermayn Parker on April 03, 2008

Some rumors said googles crawler doesn't count you meta keyword tag for SEO, they just used your meta description to describe your web at google page result. So I think backlink is the most important way for SEO.

7. Posted by Dexia on April 03, 2008

I think this post just proves how everybody is confused, from what I've read google no longer uses the tags. I still use the tag and on website I build or create. I also read a lot of SEO books and they say use, I don't think it would harm if you did!

8. Posted by Web Design Lancashire on April 03, 2008

It's true that Google does not automatically use your meta description as the snippet — check out The Anatomy Of A Google Search Result and Improve snippets with a meta description makeover for more on that.

However, I would say that 9 times out of 10 it will use a well written meta description over some text pulled from the body.

In my experience I've never seen Google use body copy rather than a meta description I've written.

The meta description does not affect your SERP rankings; however, it is an important part of SEO because of the call-to-action role it plays for someone running a search and looking through the search results.

9. Posted by Christian Watson on April 03, 2008

The Improve snippets with a meta description makeover link proved good reading - thanks for it :D

10. Posted by SSF Design on April 07, 2008

I have found many clients we have worked with in the past (large clients) have completely negated SEO. They wonder why their beautiful website has little visitors and according to their analytics program a of returning customers, but no net new customers. While it is great they have repeated business, a company will never grow without simple visual cue's so goolge and other search engines can categories you correctly.

11. Posted by Effective Web Design on April 07, 2008

No one really knows what Google does - they keep all of their algorithms to themselves so in order to have good SEO it's a good idea to cover all bases.

Therefore, good meta tags, meta descriptions, title tags are a must. Also, make sure your web page isn't broken in any way - make it standards complaint. Will it help your Google listing? Who knows, but it certainly won't harm it will it??

12. Posted by Gregor Spowart on April 08, 2008

Very informative post. The information you put into Meta Descriptions is also picked up when someone is searching for something.

Eg. If I had a title of "Sausages", but my description had "Web Design" in it, if someone searched for Web Design this site would be picked up in the search results. (Although probably not as high as it would if the title included Web Design too).

13. Posted by Web Design Manchester on April 09, 2008

I was just reading some comments to this post about how Google picks out a relevant description from your content based on the search.

I do not believe this to be true.

Google, and most other search engines, use what's in the Meta Description in their search results. If there isn't a Meta Description specified it will just display the first couple of lines of the content, as shown in the illustration in this post.

14. Posted by Web Design Manchester on April 09, 2008

I'm not sure where you read that but as far as I'm aware it's not true. Just do a Google search for web design blog and look at the snippet for the first result. That's straight out of my meta description."

Christian, that's exactly how I found this blog :D .

On that note, yes your blog is spot on! I still take the care with my site's meta-tags because I know Google is not my ONLY source of traffic (regarding search engines anyway) and it shouldn't be for anyone else either.

Another thing I've noticed is how many people actually fail to do some planning before they start out on their web campaing. I've been so astonished that I too was forced to writing an article about the subject...

Good post!

15. Posted by Housebaked on April 21, 2008

I think people get a little lazy with the description tag. It IS used by Google and it is a critical part of SEO. Keep it short and to the point and get your call to action in the first 160 characters and your keywords at the beginning. You'll not only attract the reader's attention, but you entice them to click through to your site.

Google will eventually pull your SERP description from the page content, but when your pages are first indexed, Google often uses the description tag. If you're going to ignore a META tag, make it the keywords tag, because Google does not use utilize it. Some other SEs do, but not Google.

16. Posted by Ryan on April 23, 2008

The insertion of meta tags should be a required task when creating a website. There's no telling how many people pass up the information they are looking for because the website description is terrible or non existent.

17. Posted by Dallas Area Web Design on April 24, 2008

This article holds a lot of truth behind it. Thank you very much for a fine read.

18. Posted by Dedicated Hosting Provider on April 26, 2008

ahh thanks for the info on meta description, I will look into that:-) also I think people now days rely on good links to attract traffic more than anything?

19. Posted by kevinsanthi on April 27, 2008