What is a Meta Description tag?

First of all if you are not familiar with SEO terms you might not know what exactly the meta description tag is. This tag is programmed in the coding of your website and won’t actuallyshow in the website content, but it will be displayed under the title tag in the SERPs where it describes what the page is about.

Example of a meta description tag:

Why the meta description tag is so important

The meta description tag tends to get overlooked in the effort of Search Engine Optimisation. As the meta description doesn’t directly affect your search engine rankings. BUT the meta description does have a big impact on actual Click Through to your website. This tag is, in essence, your FREE ad, where you can stand out from the competition. But make sure this description is relevant for the page that it links to; ideally you would have a meta description for each page.

If you have experience in running a pay per click campaign I’m sure you have put a lot of thought into what the PPC ad says. The ad is what distinguishes you from all the other PPC ads right? So why should it be any different in the organic SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages)? The title tag is your free headline and the meta description tag is your FREE ad, this is where you have a chance to ad hook someone in. How many times have you searched for something, got to the results and been put off by the description, it can’t possibly be what you were looking for!!?

Now, this isn’t the only reason why a meta description tag is important! I’m a firm believer that most search engines (especially Google) use CTR as part of their algorithm. Let’s say you have optimised your website perfectly for your top keywords, and have plenty of incoming links, BUT you are not getting any more traffic. Why? Because your meta description tag wasn’t descriptive or interesting enough to make the user actually click through to your site from the organic result. Now, if you on the other hand had a relevant, descriptive and interesting meta description tag the user would be more likely to click through to your site. If it were to work as it does with PPC the higher CTR (click through rate) you have the more you get “rewarded” by Google. The more targeted my PPC ads are to the relevant keywords the higher the CTR gets and I get a higher position for less CPC (cost per click). Could it also be you get rewarded for being relevant in the organic results, I say that’s a high possiblility.

So to sum it up, I believe by writing a relevant meta description and title tag, you get a higher CTR, more click throughs, thus more traffic. And ultimately more conversions!

The two Golden rules for writing a successful meta description tag:

- Keep it short. Google cuts off any text after 150 characters, so keep it under this limit. It will look unprofessional if this tag is cut off half way through a sentence. See above example of meta description tag for Powwownow and Orange. The meta description tag for Orange is cut half way through a sentence and does not describe what they do.

- Keep it relevant. Don’t get too carried away with the ad hook, keep it clear, simple and most important relevant to the page. (I recommend you write a different meta description tag for each page on your site, to maximise CTR)

Please note that these are my personal opinion as a professional SEO, if you disagree or agree =) Please feel free to comment.

David Thomas (Base One Creative Director) and I were presenting the "How to produce engaging and outstanding creative" session on the IDM B2B Diploma course this week and it served to highlight the reality gap between the type of creative most marketers run with and the type of creative they think they should run with. We asked the 20 or so students to score the quality of their own creative from 1 to 10, 10 being engaging and outstanding. The results - only 5 scored themselves higher than 5/10, there were 7 scoring themselves exactly 5/10 and the remainder less than 5. Was this modesty are there some fundamental things restricting the quality of creative ...?

Whilst watching a series of ads on Channel 4 last night it dawned on me why we often, as B2B Marketers, struggle to convince others that branding and marketing is crucial for a succesful business. It's because we use the same words as people use to describe the work of our B2C cousins. When we say advertising our management colleagues envisage what they see on the TV or in the press. Direct Mail and they think of the irritating approaches from MBNA et al. Telemarketing and the remember intrusive, poorly executed calls from mobile phone operators. Branding and they picture Nike. It's because they know that's not what their business needs that they, as a result, think that Marketing is not important to their success.

Anybody working in a technology market will be familiar with the main analysts, Gartner et al, and the power they are perceived to have in the market. But do technology businesses give them too much "respect"? Is the wish to be placed favourably on their "magic quadrant" limiting the effectiveness of how well these same companies postion themselves and communicate their services to the market?