SEO London, Edinburgh Internet Marketing Breeze Media

Meta Descriptions are a constant source of debate (and confusion) in internet marketing circles. There are those that swear by them and those that believe there is no place for them at all. In this post we will (try to) describe the benefits for those who may be sitting on the fence.

Meta Descriptions and their uses.

Meta descriptions are special tags in the code of a web page. They are used to describe the contents of that web page and for the purposes of Google they should be approximately 160 characters long. Now…when we say for the purposes of Google it should be noted that Google does not use Meta Descriptions to rank pages. These are purely optional and Google “may” decide to use them in it’s listings when describing your web page. 

Clearly if Google doesn’t need them then what’s the point in using them at all? Some argue that use of the Meta Description tag can be used to “control” what Google displays about your web page and your click through rates will improve as a result of this. This stems from many claims that by adding your trophy key phrases in the Meta description it is more appealing to the searcher and they are more likely to click through to your web page – thereby increasing click through rates. There may be a very few instances where this may be true but in the vast majority of cases this is a mistake. Why? Because Google derives it’s descriptions from several sources – some information may be taken from the meta description, some from the page content and some from your dmoz.org listing (if you have one).

From these, its algorithim decides what the best description is for any given web page and it may include a description that includes elements from all three sources.

When it’s best not to use the meta description tag

Let’s illustrate things with this example for a plumber’s website.

Meta Description – “Acme Plumbers based in Mytown for 10 years. Best Plumbers in the area Call us on 0207 111 1111″
Page Content – “Acme plumbers are a long established award winning company.We fit boilers, radiators, gas central heating and are BS9000 registered. We work to the highest plumbing standards and all our time served plumbers are qualified to BS5750 and above. We serve in areas throughout mytown and the surrounding distrcts etc., etc.”

From the above web page, the forced inclusion of the meta description poses a problem in that it reduces the potential for longtail keyphrases to be included in the Google description. As mentioned before, the length of the meta description that Google reads is only 160 characters and it is extremely difficult to write an effective meta description that includes all your possible longtail phrases – impossible in the majority of cases.

By including the meta description in the above web page the plumber has also allowed Google to include this in its listings description so it may appear like below;

Acme plumbers – Mytown, My Country [Title]
Acme Plumbers based in Mytown for 10 years. Best Plumbers in the area Call us on 0207 111 1111 [Meta Description]

This effectively reduces the number of keywords;
plumbers mytown
Acme plumbers
plumbers mytown area

If however, you exclude the meta description you “force” Google to obtain a description from the page content and the result may look like this. This expands the potential for matching your trophy keywords with a large number of longtail query matches.

Acme plumbers – Mytown, My Country [Title]
Acme plumbers…boilers, radiators, plumbing to ISO 9000…plumbers throughout mytown and district. [Meta Description]

keyphrases for above would be;
plumbers mytown
Acme plumbers
plumbers mytown radiators
plumbers cerified iso9000
plumbing boilers mytown bs5750
plumbers to fit central heating
etc.
etc.
etc.

Remember, when Google displays results, it bolds the keywords and key phrases the user search for. Think longtail combinations and potential for click throughs based on the non meta description scenario. It’s also worth remembering that whilst it’s possible that Google’s algorithim may ignore your meta description entirely and scrape the content from your page, it’s not really something you should rely on.

Blogs, sites with hundreds of pages and shopping website that contain large product catalogs are the type of site that we would not recommend using meta descriptions. Such sites typically benefit from longtail searches. For example, product catalogs normally contain excellent snippets of information about the product in the first paragraph so why go and spoil things by including meta descriptions?

Times when you may wish to include meta descriptions.

Typically if you were targetting a 2-3 word key phrase then it may be that a meta description would work. If you don’t have any content relevant within your page or relevant to the search term then a meta description tag may also help. A single page website made in Flash would benefit from a meta description. Good examples.

A meta description may account for better click throughs if it is a “better” description than that of the other descriptions in the listings but this requires more evidence (eye tracking tests have shown the title tag to be the most effective in search engine listings).

Conclusion

If you’re hell bent on settling the debate for yourself you could always try split testing to see which pages give the best click throughs, but we feel it’s more effort than it’s worth. At the end of the day you’re after the best click through rates. Keywords can help this greatly but the problem is that you don’t always know what keywords people are searching on. Our feet are planted in the “leave them out” camp and let Google figure out the best descriptions. Good luck.

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