Meta Desription. What is a Meta Descrition?
Good practices for meta definitions tag:
- Accurately summarize the page's content -Write a description that would both inform and interest users when they see your description meta tag as a snippet in a search result. So put just enough detail to arouse their curiosity and interest to click for more.
Avoid:
- Writing a description meta tag that has no relation to the content on the page.
- Using generic descriptions.
- Filling the description with only keywords.
- Copying and pasting the entire content of the document into the description meta tag.
- Use unique descriptions for each page (having a different description meta tag for each page helps both users and Google, especially in searches where users may bring up multiple pages on your domain. If your site has thousands or even millions of pages, then manually creating description meta tags is probably not feasible. In this case, you could generate description meta tags automatically, based on the content of each page).
| % OF UNIQUE META DESCRIPTIONS | REAL TRENDS RANKING | COMPANY NAME |
| 72% | 44 | Prudential Carolina Real Estate |
| 63% | 14 | Realty Executives, Phoenix |
| 53% | 15 | ZipRealty |
| 50% | 17 | RE/MAX Greater Atlanta |
| 49% | 10 | GMAC Real Estate - Company Owned Operations |
| 44% | 1 | NRT LLC |
| 40% | 3 | The Long & Foster Companies, Inc. |
| 37% | 7 | Hanna Holdings, Inc. |
| 33% | 4 | Crye-Leike Realtors |
| 30% | 12 | John L. Scott Real Estate |
Meta Description. What is a Meta Description?
SEO or Search Engine Optimization can be the life of a site. If you create a meta description tag that will entice curious browsers, this will bring more traffic to your website. The meta description tag is a teaser of what content your site has to offer compared to others. The meta tag doesn’t help with SEO in the grand scheme of things, but it will because the search bots are prone to read the title and first two headings very quickly. If they all contain the keywords, your site will be chosen.
The meta description tag is placed after the title tag within the <Head></Head> sections of your designed web page. Once you have created your sentence or two that describes your web page, this some say will not be included in your site’s description under the search. It is also a chance that if the very first item read on your page is one of its images then it would be the code for that image that may turn up in the description of your page under the search results.
The meta description tag should contain keyword or the keyword phrases users might use when searching for results. There is no guarantee that you site will be chosen because of your meta description tag, however, but it might. Depending on what the user typed as keywords, it will have a effect on what and how the data was pulled. There are so many factors and variables when Google or other search engines perform their searches, that it isn’t a sure bet to optimize your meta tag.
The optimization of your meta description tag may prove to be a help when you use the keyword and phrases, not only in the meta tag but also within the content. If you jointly use the keyword in the meta tag while peppering it throughout the web content or text in the body of that web page, then it has been optimized for high rankings with search results. Those who optimize their web pages should be careful not to use the same title and keyword or phrases on each page. This overuse of the keyword will not help when it comes to search engine optimization.
Your meta description tag will be effective if they are used in queries and those keywords were found within the Google bots crawl over your site. The first and second headings of your web page along with the meta description tag are the first pieces of information and uniquely identify that page. You want to ensure that the search engine is picking up your site on every query for those words. If at all possible make sure you have keywords and phrases that relevant to what the user is looking for throughout your page. Users have little time to read over subject matter that isn’t serving their purpose; don’t waste their time.