Meta Descriptions

Similar to Meta Titles your website’s Meta Descriptions are very important to your search engine rankings.  Actually, in a 2010 interview with Google’s CEO Matt Cullen, he explicitly says that “website descriptions mean much more in your rankings due to the information being more accurate to what the content represents”.  This being the case, it is an obvious target for intelligent and research SEO practices.  You should already have a lot of research done about your keywords and targets for future rankings, so make sure that these keyword terms and phrases are incorporated to your meta descriptions.  This is also the first part of a page or post that will be seen by inquiring online visitors, so focus on quality writing, a sales pitch or hook, and get to the point quickly.
A lot of the best descriptions are a simple thesis strategy.  Outline the basics of what the page or post offers quickly, honestly, and too the point. You do not need to write a lot of fluff, or use many adjectives, just get the keywords and concepts across quickly so the reader can tell if he’s interested and wants to visit or do business with your domain.
So for now, Meta Descriptions weigh more in your Google rankings than Meta Titles or even Meta Keywords.  Take your time and build your descriptions based off the keywords your targeting with the content, if it’s specific, then be specific, if the keywords are broad, like “athletic equipment” then be general, and hit broad keyword terms with big volumes.

The SEO Rules of Meta Descriptions:

• Accurately describe your content in one or two sentences
• First thing organic search traffic will see in the SERP result for your page/post
• The first 5-8 words are most important for the search engine spiders
• Input your target keywords into short phrases
• DO NOT REPEAT descriptions throughout your website; always keep them varied
• Look natural and human wrote, don’t spam or write junk

Examples

Target Keywords: baseball card, sports cards, hats, jerseys, memorabilia

Description for Baseball Sales Page: Baseball cards for sale, wholesale discounts on rare sports cards, memorabilia, hats, and jerseys

So as you can see the description has the target keywords packed in with a few good adjectives that are used commonly in people’s searches such as: “discount, sale, wholesale, rare” .  Not only is it easily read by a human, you’ll see the description is nice and short and gets right to the point.  No junk, spam, or robot written jargon that no human can read.  This is the first chance for a possible visitor, and possible BUYER, to come and see your website.  Don’t lose them before they even visit your site just because your description is junk, makes no sense, and does not appeal to them.  Currently with Google’s algorithm our on-page SEO strategies place a lot of importance on getting the most out of your Meta Descriptions.