How to use Meta Description Tags in 2011

It’s hard to know what information is viable and what is not because researching meta description on the Internet will produce articles that are years old. When reading an article you might not notice that it was written back in 2007 for example.

Here is the latest news on Meta Description tags in 2011:

Google announced back in 2009 that Meta Description Tags and keywords were no longer going to be used in the ranking algorithms in its ranking scheme.

This news does not make your Meta description tags useless. In fact Google still uses description tags ninety percent of the time to display what your page is about. In addition the keywords that are searched on that are displayed in your Meta description will be bolded in the search results which can increase the click through rate (CTR).

It is important to have a call to action in your Meta description if it is relevant to the page content. Such call to action keywords might be: Buy Now, Sell, Order Now, Browse, Sign up Today, Get a Quote Today, Read More, See More, etc…

Meta Description Key Points

As of 2011, some of the older sites that provide information on Meta Tags still contain valid data, such as:

• Descriptions should be short, no more than 160 characters with spaces.
• Accurately describe your page content, don’t try and write advertisements for each of your pages.
• Each page description needs to be unique just like every page title.
• Incorporate your keywords in your description; you should incorporate your page title into your description tag.
• Don’t be overly repetitive with your keywords.  If your description looks like spam and it is stuffed with keywords, the search engine could take random content from your page and use that as a page description. In some cases it might not index the page at all.
• Avoid using special characters in your description.

I’ve always considered Site Meta Descriptions to be an art form. Even today I might lean back and ask myself the same question I always have, which is: “how am I going to summarize this page with the criteria I need, in less than 160 characters?” In the end I find that it is easier to write what I feel is accurate and true, then go back over it and modify it to fit my character maximum and have it incorporate a call to action. Of course I always make sure I’ve managed to incorporate my keyword when writing the initial attempt.

Don’t expect it to come to you right away. If you have multiple pages to write description tags for, you can always skip a page you might be having a hard time with and come back to it later.

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