OK, so you’re looking for more ways to use search engines to your advantage and attract people to your Web site. You can start with your meta tag description, which can be an essential component in your quest to gain greater SEO and search engine results page (SERP) visibility. A meta tag is an HTML tag that gives information about the content of a Web page, such as what HTML specifications a Web page follows or description of a Web page’s content. For more information on meta tags visit the W3C or check out the wikipedia.
To avoid truncation by the search engines in their SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages), your meta description tag should be concise, within 140 to 200 characters. Truncation will vary depending on the search engine and the number of characters displayed in the search results
(http://www.seoconsultants.com/meta-tags/description.asp).
If the keywords in the meta tag description keyword line are not found within the text on the Web page, some search engines will penalize the page or simply not list it. The penalty is done to prevent meta tag spoofing. So, you might want to have several meta description tag on each of your pages, and be certain that keywords in the keyword tags are used on the page.
Keep in mind that there are specialized techniques involved in optimizing a site to place well in SERPs for specific keywords and meta tags. It is not just a matter of using dozens or hundreds of keywords in your meta tags. Doing so can ultimately have a negative impact on your site (http://www.bcseo.com/seo-search-engine-optimization/SEO-faq.htm).
Here is a useful article I found about the meta description from SEOConsultants.com..
To avoid truncation by the search engines in their SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages), your meta description tag should be concise, within 140 to 200 characters. Truncation will vary depending on the search engine and the number of characters displayed in the search results.
(http://www.seoconsultants.com/meta-tags/description.asp).
If the keywords in the meta tag description keyword line are not found within the text on the Web page, some search engines will penalize the page or simply not list it. The penalty is done to prevent meta tag spoofing. So, you might want to have several meta description tag on each of your pages, and be certain that keywords in the keyword tags are used on the page.
Keep in mind that there are specialized techniques involved in optimizing a site to place well in SERPs for specific keywords and meta tags. It is not just a matter of using dozens or hundreds of keywords in your meta tags. Doing so can ultimately have a negative impact on your site. We will fully investigate this matter in an upcoming article.