If you have any online presence or a business through a website, SEO is an integral part of reaching your ultimate destination. To make our digital presence efficient, we do implement lots of SEO best practices in order to get the best output. We publish different contents, and do on-page and off-page SEO but do you even care about the SEO meta description?
Well, you can probably think that meta description is not so important. Because it doesn’t have any direct impact on SEO rankings according to Google. But keep in mind meta description can make a positive impact indirectly in some different aspects. Good meta description can bring more quality traffic which can indirectly help you in on-page and off-page SEO. Besides, targeted traffic can bring more conversions as well as revenue. So why shouldn’t you care about meta description?
In this article, we try to make you clear about everything related to meta description. You can come to know more about SEO meta description, its importance, and how you can create one perfectly.
Let’s move on.
What Is A SEO Meta Description?
Meta description is a HTML tag which you can find in the search engine result pages along with title tag. Mainly meta description provides an idea to the audience about what the page is about. It is not more than 150-160 characters, a summary which helps people to decide to click the page or not.
When people are trying to find something on the search engine, they mainly use one or more keywords. According to the keywords, search engines will show some websites along with title tags and meta descriptions. We all know the title tag which is positioned at the top of the URL blue in color. Meta description is the short description which is around 155-160 characters below this title tag and URL.
Meta description gives people a quick summary of the page information and content. It can influence people to go to your website and read your valuable content. As your ultimate goal is to bring more potential audience, meta description can really help in this aspect. But you can’t expect to get direct ranking benefits from meta descriptions.
SEO Meta Descriptions Vs SERP Snippets
We often make mistakes and think, meta descriptions and SERP snippets are the same. Though meta descriptions and SERP snippets can be positioned at the same place, it has a major difference. Both of them are usually 150-160 characters long but the matter is where you can put your valuable effort.
Generally, you can write meta descriptions, edit them if necessary. You have the full control to handle your meta description of every website page. But SERP snippets are not those that you can create by yourself. This is basically created by Google to give the audience better understanding about the content of the webpage.
So, we can say, you have the control on meta descriptions whereas Google controls SERP snippets. Your meta descriptions can be also used as SERP snippets or Google can generate new descriptions for SERP snippets. Hope, we can make you clear about meta descriptions and SERP snippets.
Why Meta Descriptions Are Important For SEO?
Having a well-written and properly optimized meta description of a webpage has several benefits. Basically, a meta description creates the first impression to your audience whether they are visiting your webpage or not. Some of the important reasons why you should consider writing awesome meta descriptions are given below:
Improve CTR
When you have well written and properly optimized meta descriptions for different web pages, people can get your webpages useful on the SERF. It can incredibly increase your click through rate as your potential audience will give a check to visit your website. Otherwise, they don’t like to visit your website, so, your ultimate effort on SEO and content can’t bring expected outcomes.
Bring Quality Traffic
Your meta description includes your targeted keywords along with some essential information about your webpage. People who really want that type of information will visit your website. People who aren’t actually your targeted audience can get the idea that this webpage is not for them. This is how meta description can bring quality traffic to grow your website performance.
Get More Conversions
Meta description can be a gateway to get more conversions. You have conversion oriented product descriptions, optimized and user-friendly websites and needy products. If you have all of these along with a good position in the SERP, but don’t get potential conversion? The reason is your meta description isn’t well crafted to grab the attention of your targeted audience. Take some time and start working on creating awesome meta descriptions.
7 Ways to Write Awesome SEO Meta Description
Hope you come to know what a meta description is and why it’s important for SEO. Now how do you craft awesome meta descriptions for your web pages? To help you out, here, we suggest you some proven best practices what you can implement on creating meta descriptions:
Research Your Competitors
The first step to write your meta description is to do deep research on your top competitors. We know this is time-consuming, you need to check manually each and every meta description in the SERP. But why is this useful? The reason is your competitors use some tactics to get higher rankings on the SERP. If you know their strategy, you can undoubtedly create a better strategy with confidence.
Keep It Up Not More Than 160 Characters
Though there is no limit for writing meta descriptions, we recommend not to extend it more than 160 characters. Depending on your content, it could be more or less but remember that Google may cut some characters off if it’s more than words. It’s recommended to write your meta description 155 characters long.
Use Your Focus Keywords
Your meta description represents the content of your webpage. How do people come to know what your website is about? The answer is simple, include your focus keywords in the meta description. Remember, don’t stuff more and more keywords which can’t make any sense. Put your keywords naturally so that people can know more about your webpage.
Ensure It Matches With Your Content
What is the purpose of your meta description? To make your audience clear what your webpage is about, right? Then what if your meta description doesn’t match with the information on your webpage? You can’t expect to get more quality traffic, those who are visiting your webpage don’t find it valuable for themselves. It causes a high bounce rate, reduces your conversions, and impacts negatively on your overall SEO scores.
Be Specific
Don’t be generalized, be specific. Not everyone is your target audience. You have to figure out for whom you’re creating this webpage. Target only this segment and be specific in your meta description too. It can increase your click-through rate as well as conversion. Otherwise, you can’t get your expected returns. Suppose, you create a content for old-aged women, but you don’t specify it. What will happen? More people will visit your website and come back without getting any value.
Make It Interesting
Do you know how to persuade your audience? Your meta description is just like an ad copy in the search engine result page. Depending on your copy, people will decide whether they click on your URL or not. So to engage your ideal audience, make it interesting according to their psychology. There are many websites people can find on the internet like you, why do they trust you? Write interesting meta descriptions and make them convinced. Cheers!
Add A Call To Action
It’s important to add a call to action in your meta description. Your main aim is to bring potential audiences to your website. If you don’t have a call to action, there is a possibility of not visiting your website. The reason is they can’t find any reason to visit your website in the meta description. Without having a strong call to action, your meta description is worthless.
Final Thoughts
Crafting a well-written and properly optimized meta description is not so hard. You can simply follow our suggested best practices and create your own. Unlike other SEO techniques, creating a meta description doesn’t require a lot of time. So our recommendation is to give a little time on meta description to get several benefits.
In this article, we explain almost everything that you need to know about meta description. Our each and every information is given by our own practical experience so that you can undoubtedly rely on us. If this article seems insightful to you, don’t hesitate to share it any social media platforms. Thanks for reading.
