Page descriptions

Page descriptions in my opinion are one of the most important factors when it comes to attracting users to  your website through search engines. Yes search engines pay some attention to the content of a page descriptions so your keywords should be considered for search engine optimisation purposes. But this text which can be found under the page title in search results pages is the perfect way to advertise your website or business. The message must be in as many ways perfect for your target audience as it is for the search engines. You only get a limited time to make an impact on a user so your descriptions need to do the business.

Most search engines will spider your website and pages and look for the page description automatically and display it under the page title. The worst thing you can do is have a fantastic piece of content that’s relevant to the search a user has submitted but nobody will click on it because the description actually only lists your footer buttons because of bad configuration.

All descriptions should not exceed roughly 180 characters in length, after this all text is truncated and won’t be shown. It’s a hard job to think of relevant page descriptions that fit within the 180 character limit but it’s worthwhile if you think of the number of users that might hen click on your piece of content. Google and the other search engines will count the number of clicks your website gets based on certain searches so if your sitting in position 3 but getting double the amount of clicks than the position 2 website you can be confident that you’ll rise in the listings.

Sometimes search engines when they can’t find a page description will take the content from your first paragraph of copy. This is fine but you need to make sure that your first sentence sums up the page/story using as many keywords as possible.

I’ve drawn up a number of best practice points to look at when creating your own page descriptions. It’s well worth setting aside sometime to go through your entire site if it isn’t massive to ensure all your page descriptions are relevant and will attract users in the best possible way.

• Your page descriptions should be relevant and reflect what a user would expect to find on the page once they click though.
• It should try to include as many keywords relating to the content held on the page as possible.
• You should limit the character limit to 180 characters as the rest will just be truncated.
• Try to write descriptions that will be appealing to new users. User searching for certain topics might already know your brand and know what to expect, new users won’t have a clue.