Blah, blah, blah. What the heck is a meta description and why do I care?

​I teach basic website classes and I always get blank stares when we get to the SEO (search engine optimization) place where we have to add meta titles and meta descriptions.  I usually ask for a show of hands, and if I'm lucky, one person will have a vague notion of what I am talking about. ​​The reality is, you do know what I'm talking about, you just don't know the lingo.  And meta titles and descriptions are details that are increasingly important as our potential clients are spending more and more time searching online. I found this one when I was searching for one of my employee benefits clients:

​Looks familiar right?  It's what pops up in your search - above and below the link.  Did you ever wonder where that text comes from?  Light bulb!  It's your meta title and description - what Google and Bing and all those search engines return when you type in key words.  When you are developing your website, if you don't take the time to type them in, the search engine will generally pull whatever it thinks you might want (tip: don't trust them).  But, the peril comes if you don't pay attention because you could end up with something like this (and this is an actual honest-to-god search I ran):

​Hmm...Someone at the county just might want to fix that.  So, you see, meta titles and descriptions are important. Take a few minutes and think about how you want to be presented when your name/site/company pops up in a web search.  It's quick and easy, especially now that you know what it is...and hopefully it's not blah, blah, blah.

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Wendy Peloquin is Chief Creative Officer of Pixie Fish Marketing. She has 25+ years experience weaving creativity with common sense to craft memorable messages and successful marketing strategies.