Relevance of Description Tags

Author: Brian Basson

Although not an important factor in the search engine rank of a web page, it is still very crucial to give careful consideration to have a good description tag on every single page of your website. As with the title tag, it is important to plan and decide on an ""eye-catching"" description tag. The ""description tag"" is ultimately what will make a person click on a specific link from a search engine result. Give special attention to this fact, and you will find that your site's visits will increase by a huge margin ! People are naturally inquisitive, so make them WANT to click on your link to find out more, and not on the link of the competition !!! Put yourself in the shoes of potential visitors to your website, and ask yourself : what will make me click on a specific link - and what info and description must it contain ? End result - more visits & sales ...

As with the Title Tag, do not make the description tag too long - rather make it short and to the point, but still very attractive to click on. Google do not place any value on keywords included in the description tag, but does display it in the results - so please plan this tag well !

Keep the description tag relevant - make it an ""extension"" of the page's title. Do not loose track of this fact. It sounds obvious, but we see websites all the time where webmasters are oblivious of this ! At the same time, do not try to mislead potential visitors to your site - offer them exactly what they will find on the web page. You will find that visitors become repeat visitors, as content remains King, and all this due to a well planned description tag.

Conclusion : the 3 tags of a web page (title, description and keyword) goes hand in hand and supplement the contents of a web page - see them as intertwined, and dependent on one another. If one of the components don't fit perfectly into the bigger picture, your web page is not optimized for the search engines ..... period !

About the author: Brian is a freelance writer, website marketing expert & webmaster of 3 websites, including Rank Advance at http://www.rankadvance.com