In my last post, I talked about title tags. Titles are important, but in combination with a properly optimized description tag, can increase your rankings dramatically. When I optimize a site, I may perform keyword research, write content, work on the tags or all of the above. Let’s look at the example from the last post where I decided to optimize the title tag for “ Solid Oak Wood Office Desk” by “ABCSupplies”. In order to be relevant, we need to have as many of these terms as possible in the description tag. I don’t mean repeat them, I just mean have them in there.

In order for the page to be relevant the copy and tags must all reflect the same terms. So, a description tag for this site might read; “ABC Supplies carries a full line of solid oak wood office desks and accessories. All our desks are hand made and shipped from the factory.” You’re probably wondering why I added the information about being hand made. If I know it’s a selling point, adding it will help tempt people to click the listing. Adding the keywords as I did not only will make the page better because of increased relevancy, but also draw more attention to the ad.

If you don’t include a description tag, Google will pull content from your page. This means that it could pull content from your menu, sidebars or anywhere out of context. The description tag, when optimized and written well, will help increase click through rates. You can receive more clicks in a lower position if your description tag is written well.