Do you want to have at least some control over the description text for your results on a search page? Don’t we all?

A Google Webmaster Central post about improving snippets using meta descriptions gives pointers on how to best apply all the steps in making a meta description that they’ll most probably use for SERP snippets. It’s not something that’s not already known, well not unless you’re a new webmaster that bought the “you don’t need to bother with meta tags” hype. The truth is, meta tags are there for a reason and were originally intended to help create a structured approach to helping robots (software) to identify and classify content on the Internet. The fact that these tags were overused for ranking purposes in the past has moved the focus from their SEO importance completely, but meta tags have remained a necessary part of a well designed web page.

The post goes into detail on how to formulate your description tag to properly identify the content that can be found on a page and gives good and bad examples. I’ve been using meta descriptions for my own and clients’ sites and have found over the years that a properly formed description tag that’s reasonably short (you have to experiment), does eventually find its way into the SERPs and what’s most important drastically improves click through rates. It really makes sense when you think about it. The post gives examples where the meta description tag contains specific information such as availability and price. This kind of data is probably best left out, since you can’t rely on search engines to dynamically update your snippet every time your description data changes (product sold out, price changes…), but if you stick to information that’s probably going to be static for at least months ahead, than that should be fine. Again, my experience with meta description changes ranges from seeing effects in a couple of days to several weeks. If you are a retail site, it’s probably not a good idea to put in information like prices, especially right before the holiday shopping season - changes will probably not take effect on time, and your information will probably change quickly.

It may be important to note that sometimes a snippet chosen for you by the search engine indeed does a good job of presenting the content on the page in the SERPs. In this case, if the content on the page will not change too much over time, it’s probably a good idea to leave the page the way it is, since it already has a nice descriptive snippet. The meta description should not be ignored for such pages, but your efforts at that moment would probably be better spent on pages which show up with snippets that are just horrible. Fix the bad first, than move onto tweaking the rest.

What’s the best length for a meta description tag? Well, there is now magic number, so you’ll have to experiment. From my experience, keep it concise and page specific. Maybe about 150 characters, but you’ll just have to try and test.

The process of changing descriptions on a site can be very time consuming, but you don’t have to make all the changes at once. Prioritize between pages that are more important (ie. have better rankings for their keywords and bring in significant traffic), and than move onto other pages over time. Meta descriptions are a long term effect, but are well worth the effort. A good meta description will help differentiate a site’s presence in the search results and most likely contribute to better conversion. Oh, and it you are building a new site from scratch, don’t forget meta tags, especially the description meta tag. Trust me, they are important, and the required efforts will pay off over time.

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