Meta descriptions and SERPS

[sumiruna]

I am trying to understand the relationship between SERP snippets and meta descriptions.

There's a few things going on that I'll throw into the mix.

1) I attended a recent SEO class, where the instructor told me that the meta description has zero search engine influence and is really there for the benefit of engaging the reader/ searcher. So, a carefully crafted meta description is till important to encourage clicks.

I've been crafting unique keyword rich page descriptions for each page we are optimizing for our company.

2) I've noticed that our ODP and Yahoo directory desciptions - which are awful - are showing up in SERPs. We will use the NO ODP NOYDIR robot command to fix this, but....

3) With this command in place, will that guarantee that the SEs will then default to our meta descriptions as our SERP snippet?

How can we control/ influence SEs to use our meta description rather than a description from our page content or elsewhere?

My boss seems to think there is no way to control what SEs grab. Your thoughts?

If there is no way to control whether SEs use your meta description, why bother?


Many thanks in advance!

[BuckfastMonk]

If your description is taken from the ODP just use the following code:

<meta name=”robots” content=”noodp”>

Give it a little time and it should update with the descriptions from your own pages.

You can tell you boss hes wrong now!