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Online marketers will exhaust themselves to find the "secrets" to high rankings on the major search engines.
As Michael Murray, Fathom's vice president, noted at the national Search Engine Strategies conference in Chicago this month, over-the-top techniques get in the way of good search engine optimization. In his panel presentation, "SEO Overkill," Michael noted that excessive keyword references, packed image alt tags and other tactics sometimes conflict with much more sound SEO practices.
He advised that successful SEO really comes down to the basics:
- Keyword selection
- Page titles
- META descriptions
- Quality content (with links)
- Inbound links from relevant web sites
We are taking a closer look at the META description tag.
Many SEO observers argue that major search engines increasingly ignore the META description tag. Its value may have diminished, but it's still worth crafting the correct way.
1. Start out the description with a keyword or search phrase. Use commas or dashes to separate the term from the body of the description.
2. Target 12-15 words. If you must go a little longer, that's OK. Different engines stop factoring in the META description characters at various points.
3. Include the company name (shortest acceptable version).
4. Mention a company attribute or call to action (i.e. award-winning, leader in, founded in, discounts, savings, etc.).
Cite a couple of other keywords to reflect the page content.
In many cases, a search engine won't display a META description with search results it offers Internet users. For example, an engine may grab content near a keyword you appear to be targeting.
But the META description can appear with the search engine results. With that in mind, some marketers insist that you should include official marketing language to reflect the company's brand or position in the industry. Or, you should have a clearly stated call to action.
As we mentioned before, a call to action might be useful if it's short. But you can't jam everything into one META description.
Keep it relatively short, get your top 10 ranking and then tinker with the META description one word at a time while monitoring your rankings.
A perfect marketing message in a META description tag is worthless if you're ranking 100 and you're the only one patient enough to find your listing.
Give life to your marketing message and special offer after you land that top spot.
Questions? Call us at 866-RANK-YOU (726-5968), or email us at michael@fathomdelivers.com.
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2 Comments so far2 Responses to “META Description Primer and Tips”
This is a great article. I got a lot of great tips and pointers. Thanks for the information!!