Meta description and Meta keywords Explained

The ‘Description’ and the ‘keywords’ tags are the most important part of any website or blog – the former should contain a short, clear description of specific content on the site, while the latter must tell a search engine exactly with keywords the site should be searchable under. While giving these descriptions , do remember that if you put in any more than 160 words (google) the description is likely to cut off mid way when a search engine displays search results,so be succinct. Do remember that competition on the Web is always intense a person searching for something is only going to visit a limited number of sites, so the description must evoke sufficient interest.

Be careful about keywords – do not have generic keywords if you want to avoid being lost among  thousands of search hits. Try and think from a visitor’s perspective , and think about what words he might use to search for your kind of site. Keep the focus as narrow and specific as possible,and be careful about unnecessary repetition  – search engines will treat excessive keyword repetition as spam , and penalize your site for that by either pushing it down in the search results lists or removing it completely.

Even if you do not choose meta tag for your site at all, place your keywords in the title tags on your pages, Also go over the body copy carefully, and see where you can incorporate your keywords and key phrases – this will influence how your site gets indexed and placed after a search.

Most of the search engine uses first paragraph of content on your homepage as your site description, so be careful what you put there.  Finally if you have done all of the above, quite worrying now – that counter should start move soon !!