Looking to increase your websites organic SEO traffic? Well, writing the perfect meta description might just help you do that.
Having the perfect meta description should interest your target viewers enough, to click on your content and continue reading. Your meta description must also contain keywords to boost your SEO. Keep reading to learn more about how to write the perfect meta description for your blog post or website page to help you rank high on Google’s search results page.
What Is A Meta Description?
A meta description is an HTML element that describes and summarizes the contents of your blog post or website page for the benefit of users and search engines such as Google or Yahoo.
They are approximately a total of 160 characters long and are displayed on search engine results to inform viewers on what your content is about.
Take a look at image 1.1 to see an example of a meta description on one of our clients, Red Hanger’s website pages.
Meta Description
Image 1.1
What Is The Importance Of A Meta Description?
Believe it or not, meta descriptions play a very important role in helping you improve your websites organic search visibility and receive more targeted website traffic. Also, they’re used by Google’s algorithm, which helps to determine which pages rank well for certain keywords.
META DESCRIPTIONS HELP:
- Improve indexing so that your pages rank high on SERPS (search engine result pages).
- Increase CTR (click through rates). This in return will boost your conversion rate and sales.
- Allow viewers to easily find the content that they are looking for without scanning through page titles.
Those pages that have a meta description receive more clicks than those that don’t. If you are looking at the view from the user-experience, meta descriptions show viewers what your website or specific page is all about. And, allows them to understand exactly what information they can expect to find once they click.
Along with this, if you share a link to a specific page on your social media, your meta description will be shown. Therefore, it is always important to implement one for each page on your website.
Tips For Writing The Perfect Meta Description
1) INCLUDE A CTA (CALL TO ACTION) IN YOUR META DESCRIPTIONS.
Including a CTA is the perfect way to intrigue viewers enough to click on your link. Also, if you want to get your viewers to complete a specific goal, then CTAs such as “create an account”, “sign up”, “click here” “shop now” or “buy now” work very well.
CTAs also allows viewers to comprehend what your page offers and what they can expect to click on. Overall, the purpose of a CTA is to sell a specific product, service, offer an email signup, or just direct viewers to your page.
2) FOCUS ON THE OVERALL VALUE OF YOUR META DESCRIPTION
When a viewer is reading your meta description, they should be able to understand exactly what is being offered in the content that they are going to click on. With this, they will be able to come to the conclusion on whether or not it’s going to be worth their time to click on the link.
In order to make your meta descriptions more compelling and interesting to viewers, include words such as “new” “learn” “best” “deal” or, “popular.”
3) EXPERIMENT WITH CHARACTER LENGTH
Yes, meta descriptions are limited to approximately 150-160 characters. Therefore, going over this length will result in viewers not being able to read any content after the cut-off.
Even though you cannot go over the given character length, you still have the ability to experiment and see what works best on your page. In some cases, shorter meta descriptions work well for homepages of a website. While on the other hand, blog posts and product pages perform better with a higher word count.
Overall, if you exceed the recommended character length (150-160) it can negatively affect your page rankings.
4) MAKE YOUR META DESCRIPTIONS UNIQUE & EYE-CATCHING
Meta descriptions provide readers with an overview of what your content is going to be about. Therefore, it is very important to grab your readers attention.
Try using words such as “life-changing” “better understand” “interesting” or, “shocking” to make readers more interested.
Take a look at image 1.2 as an example that provide educational content for readers along with a momentous push to keep reading.
As you can see, just by reading the meta descriptions for both of these blog posts, you are told exactly what the content is going to be about, without any added fluff. You are told what to expect from clicking on the link without any unnecessary details or information. This is very important if you want to rank high on SERPS.
Thus, always make sure that your meta descriptions match the content that is going to be on the page.
Digital Task Force Meta Description Example
Image 1.2
5) INCLUDE KEYWORDS IN YOUR META DESCRIPTIONS
It’s vital to include keywords in your meta descriptions. Firstly, keywords allow search engines to understand the page better and also rank your content. Secondly, keywords reassures users that your page covers the specific topic that they are interested in.
Remember: Each of your pages should use different keywords in the meta descriptions in order to ensure that your page will show up in all relevant online searches.
Take a look at image 1.3 as an example of a meta description that includes the keyword “business clothes” not only in the description, but also in the blog title. This meta description for one of our clients Avon Cleaners, also includes eye-catching words such as “important” in the meta description.
Avon Cleaners Blog Post Meta Description
Image 1.3
6) NEVER DUPLICATE META DESCRIPTIONS
A meta description is a very crucial aspect to ranking high on SERPS. Therefore, it’s important to write a unique meta description for each of the pages on your website. Having a unique meta description allows not only viewers, but also search engines to clearly understand what the content on the page is about, and how it compares to other pages of your website.
For example. on e-commerce pages, even if your products are similar on different pages of your website, the meta description for each specific page must be different.
Overall, having duplicate meta descriptions can have negative effects on your website. Also, you can face indexing penalties due to the fact that crawlers are not able to determine which one of your pages is unique.
Meta Description FAQ’s
- Where will my meta description appear?
Meta descriptions appear on the search engine results page when a user searches for specific keywords that are included in your meta description. It appears directly under your meta title.
- Do meta descriptions affect or impact SEO?
Yes! Meta descriptions affect your SEO since they provide search engines with all the information about your page. And, since meta descriptions impact user experienced.
- Should I include a meta description on every page of my website, even if the page doesn’t have a lot of content?
Yes, you must have a meta description for every single page on your website. Whether this page is a product page, a service page, or a blog post.
To conclude…
Meta descriptions are a very essential aspect of your onsite SEO. They should be very compelling, interesting, and eye-catching to viewers. Also, they should be very descriptive with the appropriate amount of information on what the pages content will be about.
Need assistance with creating meta descriptions for pages on your website? Well, here at Digital Task Force, we specialize in just that! Contact Digital Task Force today to learn more about the services we provide to help your online presence grow and succeed!