Do you want to increase your search engine results page clicks? If you do, and well, who wouldn’t? You’ve got to have a killer description of your page listed in the search engine page results.
Do me a favor please. Open up your internet browser and do a Google Search for your own website.
Do you see results like the one below? The two lines of black text that appear below the link? That text is known as your “meta description” and it can make a big difference in your website traffic from organic search.
Your meta description is a pretty valuable tool when it comes to enticing searchers to click to link in their search results and visit your website. If you do not define your meta description, the search engines will usually do it for you by pulling a snippet of text from the web page or blog post.
Often, the meta description is overlooked when it comes to search engine optimization, but in reality writing a good meta description is really important.
The meta description, those two lines of text below your link of the search engine results page helps searchers decide whether or not they are going to visit your web page. A good meta description will not only give the searcher the information they need, but persuade them to click and take action.
Your homework is to improve the meta descriptions for your website home page and its “money” pages. Your meta description needs to be compelling and interesting, but it also needs to be practical. It should include the main keyword or key phrase you are targeting and communicate the benefit of the page.
To change your meta description, you’ll need to access the HTML code for your website. It looks like this:
If you use WordPress, the Platinum SEO Pack or All in One SEO Pack are plug-ins that will allow you to easily update your meta descriptions. For more advanced users, you may want to check out Yoast’s SEO plug-in, which we recently switched over to. You can see a screen shot of the Yoast SEO Plug-In Here:
About Jennifer Bourn
If Your Website Had to go to a Job Interview…
When Anchor Text Fails: Simple Solutions to Better Business Websites
Create a Super Secret Password One Sheet
What are Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) in Website Design?
Ditch What Doesn’t Work, Embrace What Does, and Simplify
There are designers that can make it pretty, coders that can make it work, and marketers that can make it sell — at 
Bourn Creative is a 
THANK YOU SO MUCH! I’ve been trying to figure out exactly what it means to have a meta description and where to put the info.
You’ve made this so clear and understandable. I’m forever your fan!!!
Melody
Melody – This is great to hear! Happy the information was helpful … Let me know if you notice results after implementing :)
Why did you switch to Yoast plug-in? and how easy was it to make the switch?
Tina – We only switched on our site – we still highly recommend and use the Platinum SEO pack on our client sites. With the way our new site was built, with different templates etc., we were having some problems with getting the titles (for SEO) to overwrite the names of certain template pages – So we switched to the Yoast plug-in which uses a different process for the same thing while we adjusted our templates. We could switch back now, but no, the switch wasn’t an easy one and it solved a short term need. Both plug-ins are effective and achieve the same end result.
[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by jenniferbourn and jenniferbourn, Melody Granger. Melody Granger said: Thx for making this so understandable! RT @jenniferbourn New Post: Dangle a Carrot for Search Engine Results Page Click http://ow.ly/1alJRV [...]