Author: Maneet Puri

What is Meta Description Tag?
Meta description is one of the most important elements for search engine listing. It offers a brief idea of what the entire webpage page is all about. Search engine robots gather information from the description and display the same in the search engine result pages. Since the description acts as a window to the webpage, it is really important to stick to the established search engine guidelines for preparing the Meta description tag.

As a matter fact, not all search engine use meta description tag as a basis to collect information for the search query, a major portion of search engines rely on the meta description tag and the web content to evaluate the relevance of the description with the webpage and the search query as well. Hence, it is vital that all the targeted keywords and keyword phrases should be included in the Meta Description Tag.

What does It look like?

If you go to the view source of a webpage, a meta description tag would look as the following:

<meta name="description" content="Meta Description here">

How to create a Meta description tag

Let's assume that we have assigned our targeted keywords to the page we are now ready to write the description for. However, there are certain limitations that you should be keeping in mind while optimizing the Meta description for the webpage. To begin with, most search engine would allow you to keep the description as long as you can; however, they won't show the entire description in the SERPs.

Neither will they index the entire description if it exceeds the character limit set by them. Ideally, most search engines will allow the character limit to be from 200 to 250. Therefore, you have to make sure that you use the targeted keywords within character limit to maintain a proper keyword density and increase the relevancy factor of the description as well.

Suppose the list of keywords that we have includes florists Miami, florists Florida, and wedding bouquets. There are two important things to be done while using these keywords in your description. First, you have to write a description that should grammatically make sense to the visitors and secondly, it should be conveying the necessary message about the webpage you are going to write the description on. Additionally, it should also be enticing enough for the visitors so that they will be tempted to click on the link.

Let's take a look at the possible description that we can make out of using the above keywords:

If you're seeking a florist in Miami Florida, Funky Florists create unforgettable wedding bouquets, floral arrangements, tributes and displays for all occasions.

Although, this description satisfies the character limit and includes all the three targeted keywords, it, however, looks too bland and uninviting. We can also ways use some more characters to increase its length a bit more and make it look a bit more captivating. For example:

Order online for a 10 percent discount!

So, now we have got the following description:

So, the above Meta description tag has all the essential components of ideal description such as:

• It is about 200-character long.

• It has all the targeted keywords in it, and

• It aptly describes the page it has been written on.

About the Author:
Maneet Puri leads LeXolution IT Services (LIT), a leading company offering web solutions India, website design India and KPO services to its offshore clients. Maneet has a substantial experience of 10 years in implementing various knowledge driven process for hundreds of clients located overseas. Visit www.lexolutionit.com if you are looking for more information on web based-applications and their benefits to your websites. "