Description Tags and Facebook
Monday, October 22nd, 2007A friend of mine uses Facebook to advertise their wedding photography business. Another uses it to promote their real estate agency.
So what does this have to do with description tags? Well, when you insert a URL or link into a Facebook message to another user or in a post to a group, Facebook automatically grabs the description tag of that page and pastes it into the message.
This makes for a new twist on description tags.
Since they hold little or no relevance in search engine ranking, anymore few people pay much mind to them. Yet, they are vital in terms of web traffic via search engines…and now, from Facebook.
Do all of your description tags make sense? Could they use a tune up? Are they too long? Too short? Here’s a quick guide to help you out:
Description Tags, with spaces, should be no more than 70 characters long. Without spaces, they should be no more than 62 characters long.
If you don’t have a description tag for a particular page, search engines typically take the first block of copy they see on the page. This isn’t always a great thing if your first bit of copy is a chart or has little to do with the page topic.
