Forums: Discussions for entrepreneurs and small business.

When someone types a query into a search engine line, the engine will return all sites that seem relevant to that query. Those are the "results" pages, and we`re all familiar with them.

There`s usually a title of some sort, then 150 characters of text. Not "words," but characters, including spaces and punctuation.

In many instances, the title showing in the results is taken from the Title tag of the page. That`s not always true, but if there is a title, that`ll be the most obvious. Do you have such a title, or do your pages just say "Home?"

Following that title, the description can be taken from either the first words on the page, regardless of if they make sense, or from the "meta tag" description.

Following that, there`ll be the URL with your domain name. If you have a company name as your domain, then you don`t really need to have it in the Title, particularly if it isn`t descriptive.

Our company is IB Designs, USA and doesn`t tell you anything at all about what we offer. So we changed the title of our index page so that in a results page, the big bold title would reach out with an even shorter "sales pitch." We figure people will learn the company name AFTER they click to our site.

The description is all anyone has to go on to determine whether or not to click on that particular link. The more accurate the description, the more attractive the page will be to possible viewers.

Without viewers, no Web site is going to do much of anything.

We originally had some description that was nice, sounded good, and went well over the 150 character mark. Learning more about it, we changed that description. The object is to have the entire description show, without the ellispsis (dot dot dot) that there`s missing text.

Maybe we could use a topic here, to see what`s what with descriptions, offer advice and critiques, and maybe tighten up some of those sales pitches? After all, before your Web site even gets a chance to work, someone has to first click to go there. :-)

Our 150-character pitch:
Title:   Personalized Gifts - Navy Signal Flags Banners

When someone bookmarks a page, they would typically see the page title as that default name of the bookmark. They can edit that in the browser, it`s only a default.

I`m talking about the descriptive blurb shown on the results pages following a search in a search engine. Before anyone would even want to bookmark a site, they`d first have to become interested in that site---they`d have to be "sold" on that site page.

The description meta tag is doing that selling. If it doesn`t exist or it`s blank, then the search engines will try to take the initial content starting at the top and reading down. So that might be a menu item plus a heading, or some sort of list of tab text....whatever.

Example site:
Note that they`re NOT paying attention to their page title and meta description. The results pages do NOT offer a coherent sales pitch:

Note their description in Google and the ellipsis:
    Title:   Outdoor Amusement Flags Manufacturer. Custom Flags. Flag ...

The actual page title (Title tag) is:

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Yes, I`m referring to the title used in a result on the results page as an actual link to the site. It`s what most people click to get to that page.