Listen to Google, Sell More!

Don't look for the perfect scenario, but you may want to learn a couple things (or get a helpful reminder) from this new Google Webmaster Central Blog post about giving meta descriptions a makeover to attract more traffic.

You've heard about how meta descriptions should be diverse. If they're properly reflecting the page content, that shouldn't be tough in most cases. Google goes into some detail about how to handle this with dynamic websites. The post comments present some problems as well.

Although the snippets (the preview text that appears with the search results) can come from the visible text or the meta description, it can't hurt (and may help) to write meta descriptions that catch a searcher's attention. Go for details, not redundancy. Focus on value, not just a string of keywords.

Google doesn't go into detail about how it decides whether to include the meta description or a portion of text from the main content. But a well-written meta description may increase the odds of the meta description being used. Google includes good and bad examples of meta descriptions.

I was encouraged that Google went out of its way to say that even accurate meta descriptions "won't affect your ranking within search results." Don't optimize a website for rankings by spending your time changing up meta descriptions, but write them the best way possible the first time you introduce content.