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When you are using links from third-party websites to increase your website’s ranking for specific keywords, often the keywords you are targeting in your links are not on your web pages, which confuses how Google will display your web page listing. In this case, Google will often takes the first words it sees on the page to use as your web page description, unless a META DESCRIPTION tag is included.

Example 1: for the search phrase “guaranteed links”, our SEO website is #15 in Google’s search results. In this example, we have a META DESCRIPTION on the page, and that meta description is included as our page description:

Organic Seach Engine Optimization Help - Links And Traffic …

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When you do rank for keyword phrases that do exist on your web page, and you do not have a META DESCRIPTION tag in place, Google tends to show the words most closely related to a search as they appear in your web page, as the description for your web page. This also happens when the search words appear on the page, but not in the order that they were used in the search query. In the example shown below, there is not a meta tag on the page to give Google an approved page description.

Example 2: a search for “article marketer” shows our listing at #6 in the search results, as shown below:

article-blog.thephantomwriters.com - How To Use Article Marketing …

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If you have a search phrase that does appear in a web page, and that search phrase appears in the title of your page, then Google will not need to show the location on your page where the text occurs, because they can show it in the Title of your page. When this happens, Google can show your META DESCRIPTION tag as your web page description, as shown in the next example:

Example 3: this search was for the search phase “performance seo” and our site ranked #1 in Google:

Links And Traffic - PFP: Pay-For-Performance SEO Service

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The point I wish to make is that you cannot always control how Google will display your web page in its search results, but there are many occurances where you can fully control how your web page is displayed in Google’s results.

I know that many people have told you that META tags do not matter. Well, I am here to tell you that those people are wrong!

META KEYWORDS may not hold much value, except in the small search engines, but META TITLE and META DESCRIPTION are essential tools, even in Google.

After all, doesn’t it make more sense for you to be able to present the best face of your web page to your potential visitors? Your listing in Google is your advertisement for your web pages, period. So, I always advise the you should put your best foot forward and to try to develop copy (Title and Description) that will encourage visitors to your website.

Here are examples of how to construct your META tags:

Title:

<meta name=“title” content=“Why People Should Pay Attention To Your Web Page” />

Description:

<meta name=“description” content=“A blurb to describe the content of the page appears here” />

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For a more complete understanding of the range of meta tags you can use can be found here.

Good luck in your search engine marketing activities. And if we can help you, we would be happy to do so.

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Bill Platt - owner of The Phantom Writers Article Marketing Service and Links And Traffic Pay for Performance Search Marketing Service.

I also have another blog you may enjoy reading at Karma SEO.

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