I am currently doing some SEO work for a personal project, more specifically I am populating the description meta-data for this project.

For this, I am making sure each page description is unique and presents an accurate description of what each page is about if a user were to click on a search result.

Now this is no secret, descriptions do work and are still useful today, yet I am still amazed at some of the great companies and developers out there that neglect this area of development (although some might argue this point, more on that later).

An Observation

Doing some research into current states of descriptions on a few local and international agency websites this is the sort of descriptions I have seen:

Web Agency #1

Great description of the home page, not trying to be too specific but it gives you an idea of what Digital Studios do and if you want to know more you will go ahead and click this link.

About page is also a good summary of what you might encounter when you click this link, more importantly it’s different than the index page description.

Web Agency #2

This description is a good example, much like the first agency I have detailed above.

The about page is what lacks here, it’s the same as the index page which means many pages probably repeat this meta-data. You are allowed two results per URL on the search results page, so you are not helping users with redundant descriptions.

Web Agency #3

If you don’t supply description meta-data, then each search engine will populate it using it’s own method. Google will often use text from your website. These commonly end up being navigation, footer links and copyright information or other jibberish. Not helpful at all…

Who’s problem is it anyway?

Who is responsible for filling this out anyway? The front-end developer? The copy writer? Do you even have a copy writer? I worked for an online media company and have seldom seen a copy writer come in for any projects.

From my past experience, the problem with incomplete description meta-data is that it just falls through the cracks. As a developer, I never put up my hand to populate this because that’s what the back-end guys are for…

… the back-end guys build this functionality but they aren’t in charge of what actually goes in there, that’s up to the producer or the project manager.

Even the SEO guy is passing the buck as he is to busy with ’strategy’ and can’t possibly be concerning himself with manually typing out descriptions for hundreds of pages. Fair enough.

The Cliffhanger

Descriptions have to be done and it has to be part of the road map before a project starts, or at least be integrated into the everyday process of how you build websites in your organisation.

These things can be done by quite a few people, but these people need to be designated from the start and have to be aware of the tasks that must be complete when a website goes live.

For part 2 of this post, let’s discuss some of the ways to make this a bit easier to accomplish for all your projects. It’s better to plan for this part of the job, rather than avoid it and have to fix it up again later once everyone has moved on to something else.