Website descriptions

[peterjhale]

Descriptions are really important. These help describe your site and will be the headline your visitors see in the search engines to entice them into your site.

The description in your meta tags is the 2/3 line decription of that web PAGE - it is nearly always shown in the search engine results pages (SERPS) if the search engine believes it best shows the results from the user query and the page that it is serving.

That means, this is your opportunity to actually write what will be seen by visitors in the SERPS for your key words.

You should write your description for your visitors AND the search engines.

You only have about 20 - 25 words that will show up in the description area on the google results page. If you don't have a meta description for any specific page on your site, google will take the most relevant part of your text and make a description for you. It will look something like this:

..diamonds and jewelry online... salary will buy you quality diamonds ... if only we could find some Diamonds. Whenever I am searching...

Okay so it has diamonds in it alot but are the users going to click on it? If you're in the first position for that keyword they may click on your listing but if you're lower in the ranks there's a good chance that someone else has built a description that is a lot more inviting to what the user is looking for.

Order Quality diamonds online at diamonds.com. All of our diamonds are expert certified and come with a 25 year guarantee. Free secure next day delivery.

This description will tell the user a lot more about what can be expected from the site as well as portraying the best things about your product while the google description may not tell the user things like guaranteed results, the fact that you can order diamonds and things that you would want the user to know.

You should also write a different description for each page.

[james]

Thanks Peter - good advice

[louise]

Yes - thanks

Webdesign is only half the battle unfortunately

Lou

[peterjhale]

no probs - more advice coming


Any other comments on the descriptions side ?

[james]

when's the next tips due ?

[peterjhale]

very soon !

[mbailey]

There are several things that you need to do to get anywhere decent rankings:

1. Add in the keyword and description meta tags into each and every page.

2. Make sure that your page title also contains relevant keywords.

3. Search engines will also check the content of your page against keywords, description and title, but also the POSITION of the text within the page. Ensure that main keywords at least also appear near the start and end of the page.

4. Pages should have around 300 words otherwise sites such as Google will rank them lower due to lack of content

5. The most important point: Get as many people to link to your site as possible. Google (and many others) rank by 'authority'. If your site has many other sites (also being spidered by Google) linking to it it will be seen as an authority in its field and placed above them.

Note that Google employs extremely effective anti-trick mechanisms, so for example you can't just build loads of pages embedded with keywords that link to one site as it (somehow!) knows when it's being spoofed. The porn industry has led the way in search engine tricking, and Google has worked hard to combat this, with reasonable success.

Martin Bailey
Author: Marketing your Business
www.marketingyour.biz

[peterjhale]

Thanks for that Mike

All pages need to be unique - Google is looking for unique content, rather like DMOZ

Your title should reflect what the page is about and it's always display in the search engine results pages so think hard about what you want to be displayed

[peterjhale]

BTW Mike - now you have >15 posts you can have a link from this forum to your site for 2 weeks - part of my initial teaser !

Just let me know where I should link to

[mbailey]

Do you mean me (Martin), and not Mike?