Good practices for description meta tags

 

• Accurately summarize the page’s content – Write a description that would both inform and

interest users if they saw your description meta tag as a snippet in a search result.

Avoid:

• writing a description meta tag that has no relation to the content on the page

• using generic descriptions like “This is a webpage” or “Page about baseball

cards”

• filling the description with only keywords

• copy and pasting the entire content of the document into the description meta

tag

• Use unique descriptions for each page – Having a different description meta tag for each

page helps both users and Google, especially in searches where users may bring up

multiple pages on your domain (e.g. searches using the site: operator). If your site has

thousands or even millions of pages, hand-crafting description meta tags probably isn’t

feasible. In this case, you could automatically generate description meta tags based on

each page’s content.

Avoid:

• using a single description meta tag across all of your site’s pages or a large

group of pages

• Accurately summarize the page’s content - Write a description that would both inform and interest users if they saw your description meta tag as a snippet in a search result.

Avoid:

• Writing a description meta tag that has no relation to the content on the page
• Using generic descriptions like “This is a webpage” or “Page about baseball cards”
• Filling the description with only keywords
• Copy and pasting the entire content of the document into the description metatag

• Use unique descriptions for each page - Having a different description meta tag for each page helps both users and Google, especially in searches where users may bring up multiple pages on your domain (e.g. searches using the site: operator). If your site has thousands or even millions of pages, hand-crafting description meta tags probably isn’t feasible. In this case, you could automatically generate description meta tags based on each page’s content.

Avoid:

• Using a single description meta tag across all of your site’s pages or a large group of pages

Good practices for URL structure

• Use words in URLs – URLs with words that are relevant to your site’s content and structure

are friendlier for visitors navigating your site. Visitors remember them better and might be

more willing to link to them.

Avoid:

• using lengthy URLs with unnecessary parameters and session IDs

• choosing generic page names like “page1.html”

• using excessive keywords like “baseball-cards-baseball-cards-baseballcards.

htm”

• Create a simple directory structure – Use a directory structure that organizes your content

well and is easy for visitors to know where they’re at on your site. Try using your directory

structure to indicate the type of content found at that URL.

Avoid:

• having deep nesting of subdirectories like “…/dir1/dir2/dir3/dir4/dir5/dir6/

page.html”

• using directory names that have no relation to the content in them

• Use words in URLs - URLs with words that are relevant to your site’s content and structure are friendlier for visitors navigating your site. Visitors remember them better and might be more willing to link to them.

Avoid:

• Using lengthy URLs with unnecessary parameters and session IDs
• Choosing generic page names like “page1.html”
• Using excessive keywords like “baseball-cards-baseball-cards-                 baseballcards.

• Create a simple directory structure - Use a directory structure that organizes your content well and is easy for visitors to know where they’re at on your site. Try using your directory structure to indicate the type of content found at that URL.

Avoid:

• Having deep nesting of subdirectories like “…/dir1/dir2/dir3/dir4/dir5/page.html”
• Using directory names that have no relation to the content in them.

• Provide one version of a URL to reach a document - To prevent users from linking to one version of a URL and others linking to a different version (this could split the reputation of that content between the URLs), focus on using and referring to one URL in the structure and internal linking of your pages. If you do find that people are accessing the same content  through multiple URLs, setting up a 301 redirect from non-preferred URLs to the dominant URL is a good solution for this.

Avoid:

• Having pages from subdomains and the root directory (e.g. “domain.com/page.htm” and “sub.domain.com/page.htm”) access the same content
• Mixing www. and non-www. versions of URLs in your internal linking structure
• Using odd capitalization of URLs (many users expect lower-case URLs and remember them better)

Life Cycle for a Google Query

The life span of a Google query normally lasts less than half a second, yet involves a number of different steps that must be completed before results can be delivered to a person seeking information.

3. The search results are returned to the user in a fraction of a second.			1. The web server sends the query to the index servers. The content inside the index servers is similar to the index in the back of a book – it tells which pages contain the words that match the query.

	2.The query travels to the doc servers, which actually retrieve the stored documents. Snippets are generated to describe each search result.

How to read search results on Google

The goal is to provide you with results that are clear and easy to read. The diagram below points out four features that are important to understanding the search results page:

  

    
1. The title: The first line of any search result is the title of the webpage.
2. The snippet: A description of or an excerpt from the webpage.
3. The URL: The webpage’s address.
4. Cached link: A link to an earlier version of this page. Click here if the page you wanted isn’t available.

All these features are important in determining whether the page is what you need. The title is what the author of the page designated as the best short description of the page.

The snippet is Google’s algorithmic attempt to extract just the part of the page most relevant to your query. The URL tells you about the site in general. Read More>>