Website Design Blog

We’re often asked about Search Engine Optimisation techniques, so we’re going to include an SEO tip in every newsletter. The first one dispels a common myth, and helps you get your sales message across.

Behind every web page there are two items of metadata which describe the page, the keywords and the description. These aren’t visible in normal use, but are read by search engines. Many people think that the meta-data is important in getting a good ranking. It’s not. Google ignores it when ranking pages. The description does have one very important use.

Google may use it for the snippet, the 2-line summary of the page shown in the search results. Therefore you need to get your best sales message in the description. For many people it will be the first thing they read about your company. Communicating a good sales message makes it far more likely that people will click through to your site.

For an example, Google for “candle manufacturers”. You’ll see our client Stone Glow in the top 1 or 2 results. The snippet says “Candle Manufacturers Home : we design, develop and manufacture creative and distinctive candles.” This is their key sales message, and taken directly from the description.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, May 26th, 2010 at 4:57 pm and is filed under SEO Tips .