A SEO meta description is a description of a webpage that appears in search results and plays a significant role in clickthrough rates.
It is extremely important for you to write an excellent meta description when performing on-page optimization. The meta description is a short description that appears below every search result on a search engine results page. Its primary purpose is to inform visitors of what to expect from the web page. However, the meta description is not just for visitors, as it also helps search engines understand what a particular web page is about.
Google creates its own meta description for each search result based on the content of the web page, even if the source code does not have one.
In addition, if your meta descriptions do not meet the recommended guidelines, Google will create a dynamic description for you to display. Nonetheless, no search result will be displayed without a description.
These concise snippets provide a compelling preview of your web page’s content, influencing click-through rates from search engines directly.
In addition to driving more qualified traffic to your site, a well-written meta description can entice users to click on your listing. Neglecting meta descriptions means missing out on a valuable opportunity. An essential SEO strategy that can significantly impact your online success is crafting keyword-rich meta descriptions that accurately reflect your page’s content.
What is SEO Meta Description
According to the official definition, the meta description is
Meta descriptions are one of the meta tags on web pages. As a result of this information, webmasters can quickly describe a web page’s content and quality. When the page for a specific query appears in the SERPs as a snippet, the page description will usually appear.
The above snippet shows a meta description for a blog post published by Neil Patel. In this case, as you can see, Google has automatically picked a description on its own. Even though this doesn’t harm the website performance, automatically generated descriptions are not as descriptive as the ones published manually.
For a better understanding of why manual descriptions are better, check out the following example of a meta description.
As you can see, the above meta description makes it much easier for the user and search engine to understand the context of the web page. By adding “2024”, the publisher has also made the meta description more captivating, encouraging the user to click on the link.
When you right click on a web page, you should be able to find the meta description in the description field. The description tag appears as follows:
<meta name=”description” content=”This is the actual description content.”/>
In addition to the meta description, Google may also provide other site links, redirecting users to other pages of the website.
How Meta Descriptions Impact SEO?
Let’s explore why meta descriptions are important to SEO and the best practices for creating them for your website now that you know what they are.
Despite what you might think, your meta description does not directly affect your search engine ranking. When Google indexes and ranks your websites, it never reads the meta description. This is only a brief description of the overall context of the web page.
However, you must also be aware that meta descriptions do influence rankings indirectly. Why? Well, informative and appealing meta descriptions will encourage users to click on the results.
This will improve the click-through rate (CTR) of the web page. If you are familiar with Google ranking factors, you know that CTR is one of the most important factors.
Thus, we can conclude that meta descriptions have a significant impact on improving search engine rankings, which is why it is necessary to publish well-optimized meta descriptions.
What is the best way to write well-optimized meta descriptions?
SEO-friendly meta descriptions are fairly straightforward to write, and if you have a basic understanding of writing, you can easily optimize them. All you have to do is follow these guidelines.
Optimal length for meta descriptions
Good SEO practices recommend a meta description length of 150-170 characters. It shouldn’t be shorter or longer than that.
In case the length exceeds the given meta description character limit, Google will either cut a portion of the length or create a description on its own by analyzing the page content. Both cases compromise the user experience. Your meta description should be 150-170 characters long.
Each web page should have a unique description
The meta description should be descriptive and give a brief introduction to the web page itself. You can’t write the same meta description for multiple web pages and expect everything to work out.
It is impossible for different web pages to have the same content, so publishing the same meta description across all of them does not make sense. This includes the home page, service pages, blogs, etc.
It is important to write an individual description for each web page, even if you have written multiple blogs about the same topic.
Be as informative as possible in your descriptions
A meta description is an extremely important part of every web page since it provides visitors with a brief overview of the web page.
Be sure to write a description that summarizes the overall web page within the recommended character limit and is relevant to the web page content. There’s no point in writing descriptions that don’t relate to the webpage. They will only harm the user-experience and may result in a lower click-through rate.
The SEO value of auto-generated descriptions is low
Although many CMSs out there automatically generate meta descriptions based on web page content, one should never rely on them. As we mentioned earlier, automatically generated descriptions may not be as informative as the ones written manually by a person. Additionally, auto-generated meta descriptions are neither search engine-friendly nor user-friendly. Don’t use auto-generated descriptions and write your own descriptions for each page instead.
Use target keywords in your content
It is still important to include your target keyword in your description, even though it is not a ranking factor. This is due to the fact that Google tends to highlight specific keywords when displaying the search results.
If your description contains the target keyword, it will be highlighted separately, which will encourage users to click on the link, thereby increasing the click-through rate. To make the description query-specific, you can also add LSI keywords. However, you must not stuff the description with keywords. Instead, maintain a natural flow while carefully adding keywords.
Get Creative
Your meta descriptions should be as engaging as possible. Therefore, it’s always a good SEO practice to avoid writing generic descriptions and come up with highly captivating descriptions instead. It is, however, still crucial that the description is relevant to the web page.
Identify competitors for research
When it comes to performing SEO, your competitors will always help you identify the best practices to captivate your target audience. When writing meta descriptions for your web pages, follow the strategies that your competitors are employing.
Update the Descriptions
If you have recently made changes to the web page, make sure to update the meta description as well. Users always look forward to reading updated content. It is, however, your responsibility to inform users when you have made updates to your web pages. To identify recent updates, add the last update date.
This SEO guide is quite old, but since Brain Dean has added “2019” in the description, it has become more appealing to users. You can do the same for your blog posts by adding the updated date.
Mention Your Services
Describe what sets you apart from your competitors. Why should customers choose you over your competitors? What special services do you offer that can benefit the customers?
Obviously, you may offer certain services that make your brand stand out from the crowd. So, make sure to mention these services in the description so that users will know about them.
You can mention free shipping in the product descriptions of every page if you run an e-commerce business. This will attract the majority of your target audience and improve your conversion rate.
Meta Description Examples
These guidelines will help you write the perfect meta descriptions for your web pages. Now, let’s take a look at some examples of meta descriptions that are SEO-friendly.
The above snippet shows the meta description of another blog post from Mailchimp. Because of its highly appealing description and meta title, a new user is more likely to click on this web page if he finds it in search results.
Amazon.com has another perfect meta description that includes its services, such as free shipping, as well.
Although this description is comparatively short, it does not adversely affect the website’s performance. Being a well-known brand, Amazon has a number of other strategies it can use to stay at the top. It’s still important to note, however, that even Amazon mentions the services in their description.
Meta descriptions can also be written according to the same guidelines.
Conclusion
Optimising the meta description on your website is crucial for providing a better user experience to your customers, even though it doesn’t directly impact the search engine rankings. In order to attract your target audience, it is essential that you optimize the meta description for each of your web pages so that it is appealing and well-optimized.
Furthermore, meta descriptions alone cannot improve your website’s performance. You need to pay attention to other SEO factors as well. Make sure your website is optimized for search engines by hiring professional SEO experts from SEO Experts Company India, an award-winning Indian SEO
