HTML Optimization : the Description Meta tag (1st part)
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,
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.
You can see in this example that some links are more catchy than others.
