It’s not often that Google gives out SEO tips and advice, but this latest piece comes straight from the horse’s mouth. Google have posted some helpful tips on how to write effective Meta description tags to help your ranking and click-through from search results.

The Meta description tag is placed in your webpage’s HTML code and is used by search engines as a 1-2 line summary of your pages content. An example of the current ineedhits Meta description tag can be seen below:

This is how your Meta description tag should look in the source code of your site:

<meta name=”Description” content=”informative description here”>

So what were Google’s tips on writing effective description tags? I’ve provided a quick summary below:

1. Use unique descriptions for each different page on your website. Using the same description tag for every page isn’t very helpful to users.
2. Show facts about the content of the site not represented in the title tag. For example this may include the price of an item, stock availability or the name of the product manufacturer.
3. Make the description easy to read. There’s no point in simply stuffing keywords in your description tag as its unlikely anyone will actually click on your listing.
4. Use dynamically generated tags if possible. If your site has a lot of dynamic content, using this technology to generate effective meta tags can be a quick way to update a large number of pages quickly.
5. Keep your description tag under 200 characters. This allows for enough space to write a sufficient description without the worry of having it truncated

If you’re still finding it tough to write effective Meta tags for your site, try our Optimizer Kit Plus service which includes complete Title, Keyword and Description Meta tag optimization.