HTML Optimization : the Description Meta tag (2nd part)

January 28th, 2008

In our previous article “HTML Optimization : the Description Meta tag (1st part)”, we tried to precisely define the Description Meta tag. In this part, you will learn how to calibrate the Description Meta tag for an optimal SEO.

A different Description Meta tag for each web page.

Each page has its own description. This description must reflect the real content of the page. Otherwise, the deceived user will soon leave your page. Remember, converted users worth far more than a great amount of traffic. In other words, choose quality to quantity (meaning the audience you target). Therefore it is highly recommended not to repeat the same description on every page of the website. Because this description would be too generic. In theory, you should not have two pages of your website with the same Description Meta tag.

An understandable description rather than keyword jam

It is highly recommended not to make your Description Meta tag a silly succession of keywords. Spamming with many keywords is definitely out of the fashion, relevant content is now king. One or two sentences properly built are more valuable than a “serial keyword” ;-).

In fact, as mentionned in “HTML Optimization : the Description Meta tag (1st part)”, the Description Meta tag is not directly taken in account in the SEO. However, it enables you to enlight your page among the search engine results (SERP) and then to make your page more attractive than your competitors. You should catch users, pushing them to click on your web page.

If you look at the Google results for the keyword “mp3 player”, you will see that it is the Description Meta tag of the web pages (circled in red in the following screenshot) which is used by Google in the result list.

meta description google serp

Try to build your Description Meta tag with your best slogans, without beeing too catchy.

For example, <META NAME=”Description” CONTENT=”Portable MP3 Players - MP3.com offers MP3 player reviews of the best MP3 players available.”>

Avoid, <META NAME=”Description” CONTENT=”XXXXXXXX : MP3 player review / best MP3 players”>

Not so important Keywords

You do not need to include your major keywords in the Meta Description tag. We insist, the Description Meta tag is not directly taken in account in your web page ranking among the SERP (Search Engine Result Pages). They just “help” search engine presenting your web pages in the SERP.

For example, <META NAME=”Description” CONTENT=”Portable MP3 Players - MP3.com offers MP3 player reviews of the best MP3 players available.”>.

Avoid, <META NAME=”Description” CONTENT=”MP3.com : portable mp3 pPlayers, mp3 players, mp3 player review, mp3 download”>.

The size

The optimal size of the Description Meta tag changes from a search engine to another. However, SEO professionals generally agree to set it to 250 characters, which is about 60 words.

The accented characters

If you use accented characters in your Description Meta tags, you must specify the charset thanks to the CHARSET Meta tag.

The following example set the charset of the document to “ISO-8859-1” (which allows the use of accented characters).

<META http-equiv=”Content-Type” content=”text/html; charset=ISO-8859-1“>

Here is a complete example with Description and Charset Meta well-formed tags,

<HTML>
<HEAD>
   <META http-equiv=content-type content="text/html; charset= ISO-8859-1">
   <TITLE>...</TITLE>
   <META name="description" content="... españa ...">
... other head elements ...
</HEAD>
<BODY>
... body of the document ...
</BODY>
</HTML>

At last, the HTML entities solution is another possibility on which the Meta/Charset has no impact.

Here is a complete example of a Description Meta tag without Meta/Charset but with HTML encoded and well-formed.

<HEAD>
   <TITLE>...</TITLE>
   <META name="description" content="... Visita Espa&ntilde;a ...">
... other head elements ...
</HEAD>
<BODY>
... body of the document ...
</BODY>
</HTML>

The “ñ” is now encoded in HTML with the special character ñ

Applying these tips should improve your click-trough rate in the SERP.

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HTML Optimization : the Description Meta tag (1st part)

January 28th, 2008

We start today with our first phase on optimizing Meta tags. The Description Meta tag comes first in the list. If you are new to HTML, you will find a short introduction (the basics) in our previous article “HTML for Search Engine Optimization (SEO)”.

What is the Description Meta tag ?

If you look at the HTML code of the following web page, (right click + View source in Internet Explorer), you can find the following part of code at the beginning of the file,

meta description html code

The Description Meta tag defines a property named Description to which a content is assigned.

In the following example, 

<meta name="description" content="Portable MP3 Players - MP3.com offers MP3 player reviews of the best MP3 players available." />

The Description property is set to “Portable MP3 Players - MP3.com offers MP3 player reviews of the best MP3 players available.”

The Description property allows you to describe the content of a web page. It is not user but search engine oriented.

The Description Meta tag, according to the HTML 4.01 standard

The HTML 4.01 specifications allows to specify metadata (data about the document rather than its content). However, this specification does not define a single set of allowed metadata properties. There is a usual way to use metadata. The Meta/Description is part of this set dedicated to metadata definitions.

This metadata all respect the same rules. The HTML 4.01 standard stands that :

  • each HTML document can (not mandatory) contain one or more META elements,
  • these META elements must be inserted in the HEAD section of the document,
  • the META element defines a property to which a value is assigned,
  • the META element can contain accented and special characters,
  • the META element only needs an opening tag, there must be no closing tag.

Here is an example of well-formed META elements,

<HTML>
   <HEAD>
      ... head elements ...
      <META name="author" content="HTML4SEO Team">
      <META name="copyright" content=" HTML4SEO Copyright © 2007">
      ... other head elements...
   </HEAD>
   <BODY>
   ... body of the document ...
   </BODY>
</HTML>

“name” defined the name of the property and “content” its value.

So we have here, author = HTML4SEO Team and copyright = HTML4SEO Copyright © 2007. Be aware that the HTML 4.01 standard stands nothing about the author and copyright properties defined here.

The HTML 4.01 standard enables a deeper META tag setting. To go further in this setting, look at http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/struct/global.html#h-7.4.4.2.

It is strongly recommended to fit to the standard because search engine prefer well-formed documents, i.e respecting the HTML standards.

Is the Meta/Description really important ?

In theory, this HTML tag is unique. There is only one copy per page, usually at the beginning of the file. As this tag is not included in the text flow of the document body, it is invisible. It is not user but search engine oriented.

Since the early 2000, the influence of Description Meta tag on the ranking has seriously declined because of abuse (keyword spam). That is why we can wonder whether it is important for SEO and whether there are efforts to make on it.

Do not under-estimate it !

This tag is not used in the search engine ranking algorithm anymore. Still, search engines always take it for granted. They often use its content to describe a web page in the search engine results.

Filling the Description Meta tag of your web pages, you will propose a description that search engines will probably show in their search result pages. In this manner, you have a better control over your communication among the SERP (Seach Engine Result Page). So you can invite more web users to click on your link rather than those of your competitors. If you do not have any Meta/Description, you let the search engines choosing any piece of text in your web page. And they are highly likely to choose an irrelevant portion of text.

meta description google serp

You can see in this example that some links are more catchy than others.

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