Does keyword at the very front of meta description have impact?

[adriandg]

I know that it is important to have your primary keyword target as the first word or two words of your title tag.  But what about your meta description tag? does it matter where they keyword is in the description tag?  I see a lot of other sites stuffing their keywords right at the front of the description tag and it looks somewhat unnatural.  What's your take? do you put the primary keyword as the first word or two words of your description tag?

[adriandg]

Thanks!

[RyanKent]

I did a lot of research on this topic for you Storwell. I read articles from Bing, Duanne Forrester, Q&As on Bing Webmaster's area and checked a few other sources as well. There are several non-credible sources that discuss the topic so be careful if you go searching online for the answer. There is even an article on Sphinn which is titled "Bing Says Goodbye to META Description as a Ranking Factor". The article simply has no credibility and serves as an example of what leads to so much confusion in the SEO world.

Bing does not definitively state meta descriptions are not a ranking factor. It would be my best guess that Bing either does use meta descriptions as a ranking factor or it is an extremely low weighted factor.

Indirectly, Bing does weigh CTR as a ranking factor and a meta description does influence CTR so it can have an effect that way. In this sense, I would suggest writing a meta description tag for users. Write the most compelling and accurate description you can which will entice readers to click-through to your site. I would not make any attempt to modify a meta description to improve rankings. Focus CTR.

[adriandg]

Does this also hold true for bing / yahoo?

[RyanKent]

You can confirm directly from Google here: http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=35624

"While accurate meta descriptions can improve clickthrough, they won't impact your ranking within search results."

[adriandg]

Wow! that's news to me! thanks!

[DougRoberts]

Agree with pbhatt, a compelling description that convinces searchers to click through can make a ton of difference. Without one, even a high ranking page may not get the traffic you'd expect.

[RyanKent]

The meta description has absolutely no impact on rankings, at least not for Google. When your page's meta description is actually used for a search result, it may impact Click Through Rate but it definitely has no impact on ranking position.

[pbhatt]

When your keywords match the search query they are bolded on the SERPs. That can potentially increase the CTR if it catches the searchers' eyes. If every site in the results is doing the same thing and they all have the bolded keyword in the beginning of the result, you may stand out more if it's in the middle. Just keep it in the first 150 - 160 characters or else it won't make it onto the SERP.

Thinking about what Zsolt said about answering the searcher's questions is more important than the exact placement of the keywords though.

[JordanGodbey]

You're right that having your primary keyword in the Title tag is import.

However, even Google admits that they no longer take meta keywords into consideration for ranking factors.

There has been shown to have some benefit in putting your primary keyword(s) closer to the beginning of Titles and descriptions - but you still need to make it natural and not stuffed or forced. One reason why you don't want it too far down the sentence is that the descriptions can get truncated and your primary KW can get cut off.

Try to get it in there using the best written sentence for your users.

[sesertin]

It has some impact bust not very serious, I would say converging to zero. I think writing a good description that answers the serchers's querry and generates clickthroughs is more important than stuffing your kw in the first few words.