Foreword: If you find that your website does not adhere to the basic guidelines below, it is unlikely to be performing well within the search engines. If this is the case please contact us to find out what we can do for you.
Our website systems automatically generate the best elements to optimise any page across the search engines.
Meta Description Optimisation
A page's Meta Description gives the search engines a summary of what the page is about. Whereas a page's title may be a few words or a phrase, a page's Meta Description might be a sentence or two.
Meta Description are important because the search engines might use them as snippets for your pages. Please note that I say "might" because Google may choose to use a relevant section of your page's visible text if it does a good job of matching up with a user's query. Alternatively, Google might use your site's description in the Open Directory Project if your site is listed there.
Adding Meta Description to each of your pages is always a good practice in case Google cannot find a good selection of text to use in the snippet.
Similar to the element, the Meta Description MUST be placed within the of your HTML document.
The Meta description in Google:
Below are some guidelines for effective Meta Description Optimisation:
• Accurately surmise the page's content, writing a description that would inform and attract a user, as they would see your Meta Description as a snippet in a search result.
• Avoid writing a Meta Description that has no relation to the content on the page
• Do not fill the description with only keywords, as this will be looked upon as spamming.
• Do not just copy and paste the content of the document into the Meta Description, if you are including some page content, ensure at least some of the text differs.
• You MUST use a unique description for each and every page. Having a different Meta Description for each page helps both users and Google, especially in searches where users may bring up multiple pages on your domain (e.g. searches using the site: operator). If your site has thousands or even millions of pages, hand-crafting Meta Description probably isn't feasible. In this case, you could automatically generate Meta Description based on each page's content.
• Include the main key-phrase for the page at least once.
• The length of your Meta Description should be between 60 and 150 characters. Google will cut off any text after 150 characters, although there is no maximum length as long as Google finds it relevant. For optimisation purposes we would advise the Meta Description length for spate site pages fluctuate between 80 and 120 characters.
