Sharpen your website writing skills by learning how to write the ideal meta tag page description. Learn to use this vital web page element to drive more traffic to your site. Use longer page descriptions to capture more multi-word searches, improve your call to action and increase click through!

Use longer meta tag page descriptions

Writing the ideal page description for your website pages begins with knowing your boundaries. You can write a web page description that is too short and you are wasting one of your most valuable assets. Write a web page description that is too long and you are wasting your time and diluting your focus... because your great work of prose is going to get truncated and chopped to pieces anyway.

How long should your meta tag page descriptions be?

Here's a way to test the boundaries of how many words you can use when writing your meta tag page descriptions.

Try a search for a single keyword such as "dentists". On the search engine results page you should get the standard 2 line 150 character snippet containing the searched term "dentists".

Search for a short phrase by adding additional word(s) such as "dentist offices". The search engine results page should look basically the same... a 2 line 150 character snippet with the keyword phrase in it. The snippet can still easily accommodate the short two word phrase "dentist offices" in the 150 character allotment.

What about longer keyword search phrases?

Now try a search on a longer multiple word phrase like "mailing list of dentist offices for direct marketing". The search engine results page may be an extended snippet with up to 3 lines of page description copy. The allotted length depends on whether the search engine was able to find all these keywords in 2 lines or in 3 lines. The search engine snippet will grab the keywords found in your page description and if it does not find all of them there it will append additional lines from the body of your page.

Use of longer multi-word keyword searches is increasing

This extended page description dynamic is coming into play more every day as the average length of search terms is increasing. Yup, the average person using search engines to navigate the web is learning to to narrow their searches by adding additional keywords to their search queries. Are you revising your website writing techniques to meet the surfing public where they are?

When was the last time you did a search on a single word? I hardly ever use single word searches because I get completely irrelevant results. What most people do  these days is begin with a search on a short phrase... scan the results and then add words to the search term until they get something relevant.

This means that your website writing techniques for search engine optimization have to change as well.

Meta Tag Page Descriptions Matter

Chances are you have been told by someone out there in cyber land that writing good meta tags is irrelevant to search engine results and that you are wasting your time giving and time or focus to writing good page descriptions. If you have heard such advice ignore it. That person may know a lot about other subjects but they are wrong on this matter. Your meta tag containing your web page description is an important part of website copy writing.

Website writing tips:

1. I recommend you write a meta tag web page description about 200 words long and use the potential extra allotment of characters to accommodate the longer multiple keyword phrases.
2. Use you web analytics package to find longer multiple word search terms that are coming to your site to get some ideas about what extended keywords you should add to your page descriptions.
3. Use the additonal space to add more call to action phrases, offers and other advertising style copy into your meta tag page descriptions. Remember: getting listed on the search engine results page is only the first step to search engine marketing success. You also have to generate good click through rates to get the traffic to your website!
   

Read This Entire Series On Page Description Writing

• Write Page Descriptios For Higher Click Rate & Ranking
• Website Writing: Meta Tag Description Is Advertising Copy
• Website Writing: Meta Tag Page Description Length