An example of html code
<html>
<head>
<meta name="description" content ="short description of the page">
</head>
</html>
Value of the meta description tag
Meta tag description can affect the position of the site in the output of list of search engines that take it into account (in particular, Google). In addition, visitors, viewing the sickle, read the descriptions of the proposed pages. The snippet, which is formed taking into account the information described in the meta tag description, helps the user to make a final decision whether to go to the site offered by the search engine.
How to register meta description?
There are a number of recommendations how to avoid the most SEO common mistakes and fill in the meta tag description:
- The description should not exceed 300-320 characters. It is this amount of text that is placed in the output (under the link to the page). If meta description length is greater than this value, it just wouldn`t be shown in the snippet.
- The correct description should contain keywords that optimize this page. The most frequent requests must be located at the beginning of the description. Do not use more than 3-4 key phrases in the tag. The same word should not be repeated more than 5-7 times. This is the first rule of On-Page Optimization in SEO.
- The tag should describe the content of a particular page. The text should be clear and concise, it is not recommended to use general phrases.
- Descriptions in meta tags description should be unique for all pages of the site, it is not recommended to copy a part of the text on the page to fill the tag.
- The description tag should be different from the title tag or h1 meta tag.
- Description should be attractive to users, give an idea of what information they will find on the page described, talk about the advantages of the product or service.
How long meta description should be after the changes in Google algorithm?
Danny Sullivan, a former analyst and journalist who works for Google, noticed that there is no fixed length for snippets now every time google algorithm changes.
Our search snippets are now shorter on average than in recent weeks, though slightly longer than before a change we made last December. There is no fixed length for snippets. Length varies based on what our systems deem to be most useful.
— Danny Sullivan (@dannysullivan) May 14, 2018
