Easy Furniture Web Tip #265: Description Tags. Stories. Cliffhangers. How Long?

Furniture World News Desk on 6/22/2018

A description tag is the snippet of information underneath the blue title in a search result.

Google can pull the information from your web page or from how you write the tag in your web platform’s backend.

When I was learning to write description tags way back when, my online copywriting coach, Nick Usborne, taught me to write them as little stories and to leave a “cliffhanger” at the end to encourage folks to click through to the website.

It is a simple but brilliant strategy.

For example on my own home page, I could have written:

Andes and Associates is a web content development company that specializes in developing online content for local small businesses …

Not very exciting.

Instead, this is my tag:

Like many owners, when you built your website, you brushed off web content development. It’s easy to fall into that trap. Again and again your web developer …

The tag is telling a little story and, hopefully, it engages the searcher enough to click through to my website.

The above is how my tag would render on a desktop computer. Because a mobile search doesn’t have as much room available for the tag, that same tag will be cut off and look like:

Like many owners, when you built your website, you brushed off web content development. It’s easy to fall into that trap. Again and …

Because I extended the cliffhanger text in the first version, the story-telling / cliffhanger effect still works with the truncated mobile version.

Desktop tags cut off at about 160 characters-with-spaces and mobile at about 130. Use your word count tool to determine the length.

Easy Furniture Web Tip #265: Write description tags that work for both desktop and mobile searches by putting your most important information in the first 130 characters and extending the cliffhanger.

Katherine Andes specializes in web content development and copywriting for SEO — including page customization for storefront and franchise websites. Visit her website BetterWebSales.com or phone her at 559.589.0379.

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