length of meta tag description

[mickywall]

I've read that the meta tag description should be geared towards a 25-30 wordset. Is there anything wrong with an 8-9 word description?

thanks.

[Cyber Gypsy]

I use product detail pages for each product I sell and on these I use 8 or 9 words and use the plural and singular because I am describing a specific item but on the index and category pages I describe as much as I can in the description. It just depends.

[seo4u]

meta tags are passe and are not considered by search engines.

They give importance to what is visible to the visitor and not hidden texts.

But that said, it doesn't harm having theme either.

You should target your keywords of keywords on the very first few lines on the page as google gives highest importance to words appearing there as compared to text lying down below the paragraphs.

This hould help fine....

[greeneagle]

Quote:

meta tags are passe and are not considered by search engines.

I can agree with you to some extent mosaic. When recently reviewing top Sites that had struggled to the top of highly competitive one word "key-phrases" in disparate topics, I found several that had the ICRA (Internet Content Rating Association) metatag lable.

When generating that label for a given Site, you have the choice of abiding by "general" or "strict" ICRA qualification guidelines. If your Site has many OBLs (Outbound links) ie Content pulled in from somewhere else, then you must list every source to meet "strict" requirements. That could end up being a very long tag for many Sites! Is it worth it?

I believe there are some tags that hold some reverence. After the review I did, I added it to my Site and My Client's Sites.

Ken

[jawn_tech]

In my situation I've found shorter description tags to work better, giving the keyword a greater percentage of the description thus more weight. Believe it or not, I have seen results of about 5 placements in ranking using this, as an isolated change after not moving for a couple months. It was a page one ranking, but on page one 5 places can mean a big difference...but the same can be said on page 2,3,4... But that doesn't guarantee every site will see the same results. There's so many other factors in how the engine sees the relevancy of a page, barring inbound link power (which is about 90% of what a page needs).

[ctabuk]

Welcome back JT,mosiac, Hi, I have no doubt you are technically better than I will be ever, but, surely the first thing a spider sees are your text and not your site, therefore tags are pretty important (description only)having said that I have seen sites with no tags get listed, but I have never had that one explained to me, so please enlighten me.

[greeneagle]

Yeah I did get a little "esoteric" in that last post! I do agree that there are optimally "short" preferences for the tags, generally speaking... but I and many others believe that GOOGLE skips right over the "keyword" meta and goes on.

This is not too hard to fathom if you look at the importance of keywords/keyphrases as being an "ordered set" that establishes and maintains the Sites logical structure for logical entities to parse....

Just go here for better explanation:
http://www.webproworld.com/viewtopic.php?t=40894

Ken

[jawn_tech]

Alrighty, here's my case your honor(s). :)

Perhaps coincidence, perhaps not. I won't go as far as to say the meta description has much firepower for getting a page one. But I'm saying it does do well for determining what the page is about (page, not site), barring anchor text links (being the greatest). When you look at SERPs, and how they are displayed, the engine always shows highlighted keywords (or bolded) from the description tag before showing on-page content, if the description tag is present (or is a match). Of course it shows the title first, but that's a given. Second is the description content, and 3rd on-page content. True, it never shows the meta keywords in what it displays.

None of this is to say that other things aren't factored in, because they aren't displayed in serps, but remember there's a limit on what they show in SERPs. What they do show however is a clear indication of what they're looking at, and the fact that they show meta-descriptions in SERPs before text content, when meta desciptions aren't viewable on the page, shows they do give them significant consideration, in my opinion.

The part about it needing to be shorter -- that's just me saying that based on what worked in one instance, and wasn't a broad case study on my part. After not changing the page, and having it remain in the same place for a little over a month, out of curiosity I shortened the meta-description from 10 to 5 words leaving the keywords in and ended up moving up a few places. Dunno -- fluke or fact -- you make the call. :)

[greeneagle]

It may be a good exercise to drag this thread back into view since it is relevant and went by so fast:
http://www.webproworld.com/viewtopic...hlight=#199379

Ken