So you woke up one morning and the creative title and description you wrote for you homepage has been replaced by Google with some very mundane alternative content! Of course you're not happy as the idea of a creative title and description is to draw a click from the user and make your site stand out in the search results.

Fear NOT, the solution is simple! .......

Before we get to the solution, If your not up to speed with titles and descriptions and how they work, here's a quick primer:

The Title Tag
The title tag should be placed n the head section of your HTML document it is vitally important that you use the title tag, it is basically an indication of the pages content/topic and it should look like like this :

My Products and Services

The title tag is a critical factor in SEO, so write something that is keyword rich and sums up your page's content. A maximum of 60 characters for the title is a good guide to work to, this will help towards an effective title that will be displayed in it's entirety in Google's search results.

The Description Meta Tag
The meta tag description should be placed in the head section of the HTML document, although less important in terms of optimising the page than the title it is still a definite prerequisite. A well written description can make your site stand out from the crowd and draw user clicks. The meta description should look something like this:



Don't use a comma separated list of keywords, instead a well written sentence or two incorporating the most important keywords relevant to the page is likely to be the most effective.

The Keyword Meta Tag
Just a quick mention to the keyword meta tag, you may have noticed that there are zillion articles and references (maybe a slight exaggeration) to the keyword meta tag on the web, these articles are either very old or written by people who don't know what they are talking about! Google ignores this tag and Yahoo places very little importance on it. So if you had the idea that you'd put a keyword meta tag in your page list all your keywords and see results then think again. Google and Yahoo have evolved and this really won't do you any good at all, even worse if you abuse the tag you might find it has a negative impact. Now having said this I usually add the meta keywords tag and use it conservatively with a short comma separated list of keywords/phrases that also appear in the body of the page. I work on the basis that even the slightest benefit is better than nothing and who knows what may happen in the future. maybe Google will start using the tag in some small way again, as long as you use the tag sensibly I don't see that it will hurt. You keyword meta tag should look something like this:



......And now back to your alterative title and description you're seeing on Google

If your site is listed in the ODP (Open Directory Project) web directory then the Title and Description for your web site may be taken from this information. Now when an editor reviewed your site and added it the the ODP originally, it was his or her job to make sure you had an official title and non promotional description, so you ended up with something probably some way off what you ideally would have liked to use.

The solution to stop the alternative title and descriptions appearing for your site listing on Google is to add the following meta tag in the head section of your homepage source code:



MSN Search also obeys this meta tag

A similar issue exists with Yahoo using alternative title and description taken from their own directory. You can use this meta tag in the head section of your HTML document:



In fact you might as well kill two birds with one stone and use this combined meta tag:



Remember if you're using XHTML compliant code then it should look like this :



Job done!

Article By
Paul Maher
Web Spectrum Internet Solutions

Manchester Web Design & SEO
Solutions Provider Since September 2000