Long Meta Descriptions

[theLotter]

I want to create a template for Meta titles, descriptions and keywords on my website for old news and minor pages in order to get some long tail traffic from them.

The only template I can think to use for the descriptions takes the first sentence of the news article (which often if above 160 characters).  Since these are minor pages, how big of a problem is that?

Thanks!

[wojkwasi]

The key is to make the meta descriptions unique - if they are not important then the rule which grabs the first sentance would work fine (as you suggest).

Another rule (so it reads better) is to limit it to say, 135 chars, have some smarts in place to ensure you don't end the sentance mid word & then append the end with "... Read more here" or something relevant to your site.

So the template could look like:

"<first 135="" chars="" of="" first sentence not="" ending="" mid-word="">... Read more here."

(even if it does end mid word it would be better than having duplicated descs since the pages aren't important) </first>

hope that helps!

[JarnoNijzing]

According to Google you don't need to use the meta KW tag.

I would make sure my description tag is limited to about 125 characters. NOT More.

The length of the page should not impact the description tag. As long as it is descriptive of the content of the page your good.