One Stop Meta Tag Mania

There is only one meta tag that most search engines use – the description tag. It is not commonly used for SEO ranking purposes, but it is usually used (including by Google) as the text on the search results listing.

The content of the description tag is used more often than not by Google when it shows the results pages for a keyword. It uses only the first 156 characters though so make sure if you are using it to check the length of the text. If you do not check the length your text will be truncated and it will look funny.

So when you use a good description and a search engine uses it then it will help your click through rate. If your description is attractive people will click though more.

The meta tags should appear in the head section of the page between the head tags.

Google is a little rascal when it comes to using or not using the meta description tag. When it does use it you can have full control of what is displayed to prospective visitors but it will often change what it uses at will with sometimes it just plucking a piece of text from your page.

To make sure you have more control over what Google selects as the text in the search results as well as setting the description tag carefully also make sure that the first 156 characters of text on your page says what you would like to see in Google.

If you have a flash site or just use pictures with a little text, you have a problem! We have seen Google pick up the alt text from an image and exhibit this when it did not select to use our description tag. This will tell you to ALWAYS have some text on your page even if it is only 156 carefully selected characters (including spaces).

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