I have seen this over and over again and I think that this will help out a few folks when it comes to constructing meta description, or programming your automated system to create new webpages. Although Google announced in Sept 2009 that meta description and meta keywords will not be taken into consideration for Google’s algorithms.

Meta description tag, or sometimes referred to as description tag is the HTML attribute that provide the extended critical snippets about the page and often used on search results pages (SERPs) to anchor the content of a page. The title tag is basically the elevator pitch, while the meta description is the “Extended” elevator pitch in 160 characters.

Sample Code for Meta Description

<head>
<meta name=”description” content=
“e2 Ideas specializes in PPC, SEO, Affiliate, email marketing while focusing on ROI. Increase traffic. Free consultation.”
</>
</head>

 

What will show up

Page title and importance to SEO

What is meta Meta description tag?

Meta description tag is one of the many factors that search engine use to provide more information about a webpage on a search results page (SERP).

SEO Best Practices

Optimal meta description length for Search Engines
Roughly 155-160 Characters as the maximum is 160 characters. Adding anything more than that will result it anything over 160 characters to be omitted.

Descriptive meta description tags
Crafting a readable, compelling description using important keywords can improve the click-through rate for a given webpage.

Quotes Cut Off Descriptions
Google cuts off the description where there are quotes used. In order to prevent that from being cut off, remove all non-alphanumeric characters from the meta description.

Avoid keyword stuffing in meta description
Keywords are important to help with click-through, but there is a tipping point of over killing it and being spammy about it.