September 24, 2008 by Matt Thomas
In the course of what we do there’s one issue that comes up time and time again. Meta descriptions, people always want to know how important they really are in terms of SEO these days, should they be using them for all the pages on their website?
The first part of our answer is always to make sure that the client really understands what meta descriptions are, since we’re continually amazed by their often inaccurate perception. For the sake of clarity, a meta description is part of a meta tag, which is a form of non-displayed text embedded in the HTML of your website. This is for the purpose of describing your page, so it can be catalogued properly.
Now that we’ve covered that, I’ll answer the question. The short answer is, yes. Meta descriptions should be a part of each document that you want to be described on a search engine’s results page. That’s because your meta description is the principal component that search engines use to provide a summary of your site page to potential visitors perusing results. Think of it like an article in a newspaper, if your title tag is the headline that grabs your interest, the meta description tag is the sub header, or the point where you actually decide whether you’re going to read the whole thing.
Therefore, the quality of your meta description tags often make the difference between customers going to your site or moving on to someone else’s. For this reason it’s imperative that you include an eye catching, attractive description in your header meta content. If you don’t, search engines will simply fabricate a description by culling a section of text from your website, these often make no sense. Would you click on a result you didn’t understand?
So, in conclusion, unless you’re really willing to let Yahoo or Google to handle your search engine descriptions, it’s best to include good meta descriptions on every page.
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