Don’t Describe–Sell!

I’ve never liked the name for the meta description tag, mainly because describing what’s on a web page isn’t necessarily going to get someone to click on the link on the search engine results page (SERP).

Describing is Passive. Selling is Active.

The act of describing is a passive process. It doesn’t involve thinking; it involves observation and parroting back what you see. If you’re selling a house, you may start by describing what it looks like: the style, the square feet, the color, etc. Basically, you’re identifying the features, and as we talked about in this blog post, features alone don’t sell. Benefits do. The same is true for the meta description tag–simply describing what’s on the page is not going to compel someone to click on the URL. You need to write a clear, crisp, and compelling piece of marketing copy that focuses on (or at lease alludes to) a benefit–in about 20 to 25 words. Not an easy task.

And yes, not all search engines use the meta description tag (Google sometimes does and sometimes doesn’t). But it’s worth putting the effort into each description.