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Description Tags – Don't Ignore Them
(Article Contributed By Marie, of Sex Story Text - Posted on July 02nd, 2010)
Wow it's Friday already ... another week has just zoomed by and the weekend is upon us.
I know that it's a big weekend for you guys in the United States and Steve and I hope you all have a great 4th of July. It's an important weekend for us too because I become another year old tomorrow. We're not going to party quite as hard as you guys in America but we will be having a little celebration.
Right now ... even though he's back in his office at home ... I know Steve's having a little celebration of his own. It's not his birthday that he's celebrating ... at his age I don't think he's all that interested in celebrating birthdays ... it's the fact that a site we built for a client and made live last Friday is appearing on page one of the search engine results pages today.
Much to his embarrassment though is the fact that the only description that Google is showing for the site is a snippet of text that Google lifted from the body of the page. Yes, Steve forgot to put a meta-description tag on each page but I'm sure he's going to fix that in just a few minutes.
Now I know that I've talked about this before but it's important ... and I know that I'm in the minority here fpr there are a lot of webmasters out there who don't bother using the meta-description tag. Why bother when so many wannabe search engine gurus are clamoring to tell you that the description tag is just a complete waste of time?
Over the years those of us who have continued to use the description tag and have continued to tell others that they should be using it tend to have been laughed at. I know I've had a few people tell me that I'm an idiot for continuing to use the description tag but I use it because it works.
Sure if you don't add a description into the head tags of a web page Google can pick up some text from the body of the page and display that in the search engine results pages instead. So why bother taking 30 seconds to write a compelling head tag?
The answer to that is very simple ... so simple in fact I can't believe that so many people have laughed at those of us who want to use the description tag. The reason why you should use the description tag and not rely on the text that Google might pick up is because you have no control of what bits of text Google might pick up and display.
While everyone wants something very positive to be displayed in the description that appears on a search engine results page the only way you can guarantee that the description is positive is by writing it yourself. If you rely on Google then some very negative text ... something that has almost no relevance to the content of the page ... may be picked up from the text and displayed.
That's something that I've been saying for years ... if you want control of what appears as a description in the results pages then you have to write it yourself. A good positive description will make your website's listing jump of the page at people who are scanning a search engine results page ... a good positive description will attract more people to click through to your site than some disjointed bunch of words that Google has lifted off your page.
And it's not just me that has been saying so for years. There are a few others out there who have stuck to their beliefs and continued to add their own descriptions via the meta-description tag.
And some of those people are far more experienced than the wannabe gurus who are nothing more than legends in their own lunch time. Over on Outspoken Media's blog today there's a post about the importance of the meta-description tag written by none other than the person in charge of search engine optimisation at the Wall Street Journal.
It's an interesting read filled with some great examples of why you should use the meta-description tag and how bad your listings in the search engine results pages can look if you don't use that tag. Just follow the blog link from outspokenmedia.com to see what a genuine guru has to say about the description tag.
And now I'm off to do other things. I would like to say that I'm off to start the weekend but it's only lunchtime on Friday here in Australia and I've got a few more hours worth of work ahead of me just yet.
Have a great weekend everyone and I'll be back with more on Monday.
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