Marketing Bites

Mind Your Meta Descriptions

Making sure the Meta Descriptions on your web pages are accurate, well-written, and inviting can pay dividends by attracting shoppers to your site.

A Meta Description is a tag in the source code of your web page that is intended to contain a succinct description of what your page is about. Because meta tags are only visible in your source code and not visible on the web pages themselves, a visitor to your site will not typically see the text contained in your Meta Description. However, search engines will index that text and often will use the Meta Description when listing your site on a search engine results page. A well-written Meta Description can encourage searchers to take notice of your listing and click on the link to your site.

The Meta Description is not to be confused with another meta tag: the "Meta Keyword" tag, which is a comma-separated list of keywords associated with your web page. Since people have begun to abuse the Meta Keyword tag by packing in long lists of sometimes irrelevant keywords, the main search engines have decided to ignore Meta Keywords entirely.

You can see the Meta Description of any web page by viewing the source code in your browser and searching for this text: meta name="description"

Here are some Meta Description tips for MightyMerchant Users:

  • If you are a MightyMerchant User, you can modify the Meta Descriptions on your pages by going to any page in the Site Manager and clicking the "Optimize" link.
  • With MightyMerchant v5 you have the option to have the Meta Description text appear on your web pages for visitors to see or you can have it only appear in the source code.
  • If you don't enter your own Meta Description for each product and category, MightyMerchant will automatically insert a Meta Description for your pages based on the name and description already entered for that item or category.

To learn more about optimizing your website, visit our page “Using MightyMerchant to Optimize Your Website For Search Engines” on our MightyMerchant support site.

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About the Marketing Bite

Marketing Bites are short actionable tips to help you market your business. Each Bite contains a marketing idea and an easy to complete action. The Marketing Bite is emailed weekly to subscribers.

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