How to create a description meta tag correctly

The content of the description meta tag is a source for descriptions in website snippets in Yandex search results. The snippet includes the text that is most informative and relevant to the search query. Additionally, descriptions can be generated based on the page contents. That's why users can see different content depending on the search query.

The purpose of a meta description is to give a user more detailed information about the page and to encourage them to visit it. For that reason, you should add useful and appealing text to the description meta tag. The length of the description is restricted by the width of the screen on the user's device.

The meta tag is usually placed inside the head element:

<head>
<meta name="description" content="..."/>
</head>

When creating a description meta tag, follow these recommendations:

  • Add the meta tag to all pages of the website.
  • Create a unique description for each page. Template or similar descriptions most likely won't be shown in search results because they don't carry significant information.
  • Make sure that the description meta tag reflects the page content and contains properly written sentences that don't overuse keywords, phrases, capital letters, advertising slogans, and other methods to draw attention.
  • Firstly, add descriptions for more important website pages, such as catalog pages.
  • Include useful information in the description, such as the price of a product, its color, or the city of delivery.
  • Check if your description matches the language of the page.
  • Make sure that the description is different from the content of the title element.
Tip. Use the CMS tools of your website to automatically generate meta descriptions. For example, if you have an online store, it may be difficult to create unique description meta tags manually. In this case, you can use data from standard database fields for product properties, such as the size, weight, and availability.
Examples of bad meta descriptions
  • Meta descriptions with temporary or internal information.
  • Outdated descriptions.
  • Important information is at the end of the text. Place important information and phrases at the beginning of meta descriptions.
  • A short description of a few words.

To see if everything is fine with the descriptions on your website, check the Titles and descriptions page in Yandex.Webmaster.

If the pages don't have a description meta tag, you'll see a notification on the Troubleshooting page in Yandex.Webmaster. Yandex.Webmaster will also inform you if there are multiple duplicate meta descriptions on the website.

If pages don't appear in the search results for a long time or were excluded from them, provide examples of such pages in the form.