Optimizing Your Meta Description
Posted in Busby SEO Challenge, Optimize And Monetize, SEO by DB
One of the most abused tags on a page is the meta description tag. Long long ago, actually a few years ago, you could get away with keyword stuffing your meta description and see a positive effect on the search engine result pages.
Over time Google and the rest got a little smarter and now the meta description tag has virtually no effect in terms of ranking. However what is overlooked by many is the control you have as a webmaster in influencing click throughs to your site. Snippet generation by Google uses the meta description quite extensively but then again is not limited to meta description.
Why don’t I simply hand you over to Matt Cutts. In the video below Matt gives a detailed tour about snippets and snippet generation.
If you have been following me in the Busby SEO Challenge contest, you will notice that many of the top ten search result snippets are the meta description itself while a few are generated by Google based on the keyword being searched for.
Meta Description used to previously be one of the favorite tags of knowledgeable webmasters in their attempt to manipulate search rankings. These days it is the other extreme, many webmasters are completely ignoring it. I hope this short post helps you identify the potential the meta description tag has on bringing in organic traffic.
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