This post is dedicated to Google Search Engine Responses, I will cover all of the items but what I am going to concentrate on is the description.  The main reason for this is because no one tells you anything besides put your keywords in your description.

That is correct but there is more to the description before I get into that here is a sample of a Google search engine response.

No by the numbers:

1. The page title this is what you would find in the title tags on your web page.

2. The description that Google decided to use.

3. The URL for the site page.

For search engine optimization the title is the most important part to get you ranked higher in the search engines but having the keywords in your title, description and URL all helps.

But there is a part of the description that is over looked by most people and most courses.

Your description should read in such a way that entices clicks from people searching for those keywords.

You have also probably been told that your description will be what you have in your meta description tag.  While this is true most of the time it isn’t always true.

Google gets the description it displays in the search engine results from three different places:

1. The meta description tag is the most common source for the description used by Google.

2. The Open Directory Project (www.dmoz.org) if your site is listed here you will often find that the description you see in the search engine responses is what you entered here.

3. Google generates a description for your page.  This is done when you don’t have a meta description or a Open Directory Project listing.  But there are times that Google will generate the description even if you have the meta description and you are listed on DMOZ.  They do this when the description doesn’t match the search phrase but some text on the page does.  They will do their best to create a snippet that is relevant to the search terms.

For this reason you never really know what other people are seeing but if you set your description to match your keywords and you have the meta description on the page, this is what people will see when they search those keywords.

But I just told you there is more to the description than keyword stuffing, as a matter of fact you want to avoid keyword stuffing in your description.  You want you description to describe the page it is on and to contain your keywords and to leave the reader wanting more to get them to click through to your site.  Just turning up high in the search engines won’t help you if no one comes to the page.

Google will display 160 characters in the description.  Does this mean that your description should be 160 characters or less?

Absolutely not!!!!

You want your description to be over 160 every time.  Why?   Well lets look closer at the description for the result above.

This description is the result of a search for, event band St. Thomas.  If you did this search you would most likely be looking for a band to hire in St. Thomas.  Read the description, it asks the question, “Need a band in St. Thomas, for a party or corporate event?” wouldn’t this be exactly what the people that search for, event band St. Thomas want to find?  Most likely, then the solution is given with the, “look no further” another thing people looking for an event band would like.

The best part is how it ends, “plays a wide assortment of music and can … ” this leaves them hanging and wondering what else can be  offered.  The only way for them to find out is by clicking the link.  I am sure you can see how this description can get you more clicks.  But you only get the ellipsis (the … at the end) if you have more than 160 characters in your description.

I have personally seen links that were 3 or 4 in the rankings get more click throughs than the number one site for that search term because it was phrased correctly.  How do I know this because I have had the number one spot and the number four spot for the same term on two different sites.  The one that had a description that left them hanging received almost 40% more clicks than the one that was a snippet of the first paragraph on the page.

Make sure you do include your keywords in the first 160 characters but they don’t have to be in order and you don’t need to repeat your title. The example I have provided for you here is a great example look at the title, the description and the URL you will see  keywords in all of them and  I have already covered the way the description reads.

If you are a WordPress blogger a plugin like All In One SEO makes it very easy to customize your description of every post, if you are hand coding your pages or using another script this can be a bit of work but the results you will get are worth it.

Tags: Google, Search Engine Optimization, Search Engine Results, SEO, Web Page Descriptions

This entry was posted on Wednesday, April 21st, 2010 at 5:01 pm and is filed under Search Engine Optimization. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.