The actual words that make up your page description in a particular search engine is an advertisement for your business in and of itself. This Web site description must be effective and compelling!

When this particular text is well written using some specific techniques that we will describe in a moment, it can be even more effective in bringing targeted visitors to your site. Common sense dictates that the effectiveness of an advertisement is contingent on both the ads placement AND how compelling the copy is to the reader. Right?

Most search engines provide a two or three line site description immediately after the "title" of your site. Now remember, some search engines allow you to submit your site description to them and others use a "software spider" to visit your site to take title and site description text right off of your page. The worst mistake you can make is to allow the search engine's spider to index text from your site that is completely irrelevant to your content such as:


Legal Notice / Terms of Use, |, Affiliate Program, |, Jobs, |, Site Map ·
Mac Player, |, Linux / Unix Player, |, Mobile Player, |, Software Accessories.


(which is an actual "description" for www.real.com, a company that should know better! Or how about:


Welcome to Zebra Enterprises, we hope you'll find us a valuable source of [May 15 97]...

Think about it - when presented with 50 matches from a keyword search, how often would you select that one? Even if a listing like the one above appears in the number one spot the reader will skip it and move down the list.

They inevitably choose the one with the most compelling description, regardless of its position. I rarely pick the first match. I'll at least scan the first 10 entries and pick one that looks the most appealing.

Directory services like Yahoo give you the option to provide the site description. Make sure you type & proof-read your description in advance so you don't feel rushed to fill in the field on the submit page.

For most other search engines such as Google, Iwon, AltaVista, Fast/Alltheweb, Lycos etc. which employ "Spiders" to index the content of your page automatically, two techniques are used:

The engine will "Spider" or scan your page for a Description Meta Tag to use for their "summary description."

Therefore, ALWAYS include a description Meta Tag on **every** page of your site, NOT just on the home page. If you have different topics of content on different pages within your site, you should create a separate description Meta Tag tailored for each of these pages. As always include keywords in this description as you do the rest of the page.

Inserting the description tag is easy. Just go to the Page Properties dialog in WebStudio. Click on the Page Meta Tags tab. Enter the text of your description in the Description field. Important Note: You should not exceed 200 characters in the length of the description Meta Tag.

Some search engines will ignore the Description Meta Tag and instead extract what it determines is the most "Relevant" content for the page. Most will extract the first few sentences from the top of a page. For this reason, it becomes very important to make sure your leading paragraph is filled with both keywords and text that would be compelling to the reader who is reading it on a search engine as your site's description.

Avoid copy at the top of a page that is uninviting when viewed as a search engine's description of your site such as "Welcome to our site" or "The following content was created by Bob Wastespace and Karen Fillerman."

To avoid the problem of irrelevant text in that summary paragraph such as items on your main menu, create a simple "optimized page" that includes a link to your home page, but excludes extra text like menu links.

Occasionally search engine spiders will extract a chunk of text in the middle of your page that says nothing of interest to the reader and may not even be an appropriate description of your site! This can be maddening. The solution is simple, though - conduct a search for your site in each search engine and check to be sure this description is meaningful and consistent with the content of your Web site.

You could be surprised to find that even for keywords that you rank well under, the site description returned is hardly compelling, and often cryptic. Once you identify the problem, you can redesign the page or create a new doorway page which includes only text you want the engine to display. Don't forget to have a link to the rest of your site though. You wouldn't be the first camper who built a terrific doorway page to achieve a good listing
and forgot to have that page link to the rest of your site!

Here's a great tip. To quickly see how Google lists that pages on your site, just search for "site:" followed by your domain name. For example: site:webstudio.com

This will list all of the page Google has indexed on your site. It is a good way to view the page descriptions from Google's perspective, and a way to see the extent of Google's indexing of your site.

The next article in this series is How to Write a Site Description That Reels In Visitors