The description meta tag does a few things for search engines that use them. They give the spiders a brief description or your web site to use for search results, and they collect keywords from it which are counted as having a higher importance. Because your description tag not only has to be an attention grabber, but also has to contain your most important keywords, it can be a difficult process to make them. Not to mention that it acts as the front door to your web site, and if it is unattractive, no matter how beautiful your 'house' is no one will enter. First off let's look at the construction of the description meta tag:
<meta name="description" content="Insert Description Here">
There are several different opinions and views on a few different topics surrounding the description meta tag and I will discuss them and give the different opinions and what I believe is the most correct.
The first thing that I would like to discuss is the placement of your keywords in the description tag. I have heard a lot of people say that you want to place the most important keywords as close to the beginning of the description tag as possible because it will give those keywords more importance. I feel that this could very well be true and should try to be used as a guideline when you are writing your description tag but to the other extent I think you would be much better off if instead you focused your energy on crafting a description that sounds natural, is an attention grabber, but still contains your most important keywords. Any keywords that you do use should not only be contained in your description tag but also your title, your keywords, and liberally throughout your body content.
Another thing to consider with your description tag is capitals. Since most people search throughout the internet using loser case, you should also use lower case for the better part. While you might feel that all upper case will catch attention a lot easier, and it might, it is the wrong kind of attention. Most people are extremely annoyed by all upper case fonts. The only place where you want to use upper case is at the beginning of the sentence, and any other words that would normally be capitalized such as "Costa Rica" or your businesses name. Another thing that I should mention is the fact that you can not exclamate an exclamation mark, so don't do it!!! If anything it will turn people away as it is very unprofessional and you could be using those extra spaces to write more keyword rich sentences instead of having what I like to call 'dead space'.
The length of the description tag varies depending on each individual search engine but as a recommended amount I would suggest 75-125 characters. The most important part isn't cramming as many keywords into your description as possible, but rather to construct a description meta tag that sounds natural in speech, contains your most important keywords, and grabs the attention of possible clients. Some people argue the fact that more characters diminish the importance of your other keywords so fewer is better, but it is not clear as search engines to not reveal their algorithms.
For those of you who would like to know the specifics for some of the major search engines and directories, here is a list of a few search engines, weather they use description meta tags, and how many characters they allow in the description tag. While some do not use meta description tags, they do allow you to use description tags during submission and the number indicated would then be this. Some of the character lengths are inconsistent and I will note those that are:
| Search Engine | Max Desc. Length | Uses Meta Desc. Tag |
| Altavista | 150 Characters | Yes |
| Web Crawler | 200 Characters | Yes |
| Direct Hit | 250 Characters | Yes |
| n/a | No | |
| Open Directory | 30 Words | No |
| Lycos/Fast | Not Consistent | No |
| Inktomi | Not Consistent | No |
| LookSmart | 144 Characters | No |
| Excite | 200 Characters | Yes |
| Northern Light | Not Consistent | No |
As you can see not all of the major search engines and directories use meta description tags but that does not mean that they are not important, as a fair percentage of the major ones still do use them. Also for the ones that do not use them, they do however ask for a description of your web site when you submit it, and in this case you already would have one.
Now I will give you an example of a bad description tag and show you how to improve it. Our imaginary web site will be a Mexican restaurant in San Francisco:
bad:
Everyone is chowing down at Mexican Momma's on our delicious burritos and salsa!
good:
Mexican restaurant in San Francisco, we have burritos and delicious Mexican salsa at Mexican Momma's!
In location specific businesses it is very important that you use the location place as one of your keywords. In the second example the most important part is at the beginning, so people that are searching for "Mexican restaurant in San Francisco" will be most likely to find the second example while in the first one you are telling the spiders that you want your most important words to be "Everyone is chowing down" which is not widely searched for when looking for a Mexican restaurant in San Fransisco. Also the second example contains more keywords (Mexican 3-2 and San Francisco) and in either you will be just as likely to find the restaurant if you were searching specifically for "Mexican Momma's".
The most important thing of coarse is finding the right keywords to incorporate into your description as it will be useless if no one is searching for the terms that are contained within your description, or for that matter throughout your entire web site. Like I have mentioned in other articles to do with search engine optimization, you can discover which keywords are most suitable at Word Tracker.com. They provide a free trial version which is more then enough to get you started.
As always it is not usually the individual things that will make a difference in your search engine ranking but rather all the aspects of search engine optimization will eventually lead to a high search engine ranking. Search engine optimization takes time, as everything, and it is important not to rush it but rather to take time to develop and find keywords that will work for you and to eventually, with time, incorporate them throughout your web site and always have them in mind when you are writing articles and the like. Description meta tags are important to some search engines and directories but it will not boost your search engine ranking alone.