The meta description attribute (sometimes called a "tag") is a largely undervalued facet of search engine marketing. A meta description is an HTML and XHTML element that describes your page to search engines. While the perceived (and real) importance of meta data has depreciated, the attribute still plays a significant role in SEO rankings. In this article, you'll learn: what "meta description" means, as well as how to view your site's meta description, and how it impacts visitors, why the term is important to you and to your SEM efforts, and how to extract real search value from your meta description.

1. Meta Description - What Google Does With
Your Meta Description
The meta description attribute (sometimes called a "tag") is a largely undervalued facet of search
engine marketing.
A meta description is an HTML and XHTML element that describes your page to search
engines. While the perceived (and real) importance of meta data has depreciated, the attribute
still plays a significant role in SEO rankings.
In this article, you'll learn:
What "meta description" means, as well as how to view your site's meta description, and
how it impacts visitors.
Why the term is important to you and to your SEM efforts.
How to extract real search value from your meta description.
So What is a Meta Description, Anyway?
As we mentioned above, a meta description is an attribute within a meta tag that helps describe
your page to search engines. Your page likely already contains a meta description. You can find
it by right clicking on a page, and selecting "view source" or "view page source":

2. Once you're looking at the page's code, you'll likely see a meta description tag, which will
probably look something like this:
<meta name="description" content="Meta descriptions can have a surprisingly large
impact on your search marketing campaigns; find out how..." />
<meta name="keywords" content="meta description,google meta description,meta name
description" />
<meta name="robots" content="index,follow" />
This information has a few purposes, one of which is to serve as the snippet of text shown to
searchers in response to a query, to summarize your page.
So a search for "meta keywords" on Google might elicit a SERP listing like the following:
OK, But Why Should I Care? What Does the Meta
Description Attribute Have to Do With Me?
Meta description tags can have a significant impact on your search engine optimization efforts
has one central value:
Your meta description acts as "organic ad text".
What this means is that when your ad ranks for a keyword, Google and other engines will often
show the meta description as a summary of the page.
This makes the meta description as important as ad text.
You can write compelling text here in an effort to raise the click-through rate of your organic
search results.

3. OK, So What's Next: How can I Write Better Meta
Descriptions?
The best practices for creating good meta descriptions are a lot like those for writing great ad
text:
Use researched, targeted keywords in the copy.
Communicate Benefits.
Compel them to Click.
The good news is, WordStream's ad text tools can offer as much benefit for SEO (writing great
meta descriptions) as they do for pay-per-click (creating compelling ads).
Once you've had keywords suggested to you and you've outlined your information architecture
and have settled on keyword targets for a page, you can receive intelligent ad text suggestions for
a set of keywords:
Obviously we can't just use a list of targeted keywords as our meta description, but in creating
meta descriptions, these keywords are a good indicator of what people will be searching for. We
can now use the same language as the searcher in crafting our meta description.
Additionally, by using the two description lines, we'll have a succinct, compelling meta
description.
Get More Out of Your Meta Descriptions
To learn more about how our tool works and how it can help you to create great meta
descriptions, you can try WordStream for SEO FREE Today!