Writing a description for your Web site

Just like titles, every Web page should have its own description. This description should be included on your Web page and between the HTML META tags. Also, like titles, your Web page description can be different than the one that appears between the HTML META tags. Since your Web page description will be used by prospects to figure out what they are looking at, it should be short and to the point. A couple of clear sentences that describe your online business should suffice. Also, some search engines use the written description on your visible page for indexing and listing your site.

In addition to having a description appear on your Web page, you should also ensure that a description appears between the HTML META tags. However, the description that you use between these tags will not be seen by visitors to your site, but rather used by some search engines as a description for your site. Therefore, this description can be different and longer than the one that appears visibly on your Web site.

The HTML code for your description appears between the META tags of the document, and looks like
<meta name="Description" content="your Web site description goes here">.

Finally, you should be aware that that some search engines place more importance on words that appear toward the top of your page, than those that appear further down. Therefore you should ensure that your most important information is included at the beginning of both your Web page and META descriptions. Additionally, the description should contain your top 3 or 4 keywords, since some search engines use word repetition (keyword density) in their Web site ranking algorithms.