Sep 13
Q & A: Multiple Meta Description Tags
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Dear Kalena…
I just noticed that my company’s homepage has five meta description tags within the head tag. Will this have any negative ramifications?
Thank you, Heather
Dear Heather,
I am curious as to how your site got that many meta description tags. In fact, you also seem to have multiple keyword meta tags. You may get penalized by Google for duplicate content, but regardless, it’s bad design practice to have improperly formatted meta tags, I would remove the extra tags ASAP. I wrote a post about meta tags once on my own blog, but here are a few tips.
(1) Keep the description tag down to about 120 characters. (2) Include a compelling call-to-action since this tag usually shows up on the SERPS (search engine results page). (3) Be sure your important keywords are used at the beginning of the description. (4) Don’t keyword-stuff, and use the same keywords more than a couple of times, even as different variations.
Hope this helps!
best, Nick
www.TheSmallMerchant.com
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February 18th, 2010 at 10:33 pm
A great ‘to the point’ post Nick. I especially like the “compelling call-to-action” part.
When will people understand that meta description should be treated as an Ad/Sales Copy and not another place to stuff keywords. Off course keywords are important but a well written description can both be compelling and keyword rich.