Webmasters are trying new ways to improve their website reach online. As the competition gets higher some minute factors can save your website from being irrelevant. A meta description is such a factor when you consider the whole list of search engine optimization tactics. If you want to make your website stand out among thousands of other websites the best way is to optimize it for search engine.
Websites which include good meta description can get a greater number of visitors which can gradually increase its ranking. Many webmasters don’t even give attention to meta descriptions and related factors. But it is very important when it comes to the ranking of your website. If you are new to this term, then you need to know the actual meaning of this term.
What is a meta description?
It is a small description part that you can find below the link to your website. It mainly gives a brief idea about the content that you can find on the webpage. A meta description is mainly used to make people click on your webpage link. To make it more relevant there will be bold terms that match with the search.
In order to make people click on the link, you should concentrate on making the meta description more relevant and easily interpretable for internet users. People read this description before clicking on the links to know the contents in that web page. So we can say that meta description is a small introduction to the whole content of a website. You can make it more relevant to attract as many searches as possible.
No one will go all the way below the SERP to get an answer to the question they search for. They only focus on top results in the result page. If you can bring your web page to the top position of SERP by implementing various SEO strategies, you can be successful.
This is possible if you can make your meta description more relevant to the search result. Just by giving something that is irrelevant cannot help you to get a better ranking. You should focus on including a description that actually represents the topic of the webpage.
Difference Between Search Snippet and Meta Description?
Many people use both words interchangeably. The meta description is an HTML tag which shows the description of that page. Search snippet is the small description part which takes from meta description and there is no surety of taking the whole meta description as a search snippet.
When we write we can assume that it might get featured as a search snippet. To do that, you need to do so many steps which I described below.
Importance of Meta descriptions:
When you do SEO of your web page the first thing comes to your mind will be better ranking. But meta description will help you to improve the click-through rate of your webpage easily. Google algorithm checks the meta description while indexing a website and rank based on it.
You can right-click on any web page and go to “view source” to see the meta description. There you can see a code with meta description sentence on it. This is mainly used to describe the content of a webpage to internet users and can also act as a snippet when searches search something on the internet.
By including meta description there are many advantages. The main thing is that users will get clarity about the content before clicking on the link of your web page. You can impress them about the content using a clear and brief meta description with required keywords.
If users can find these keywords which shows in the bold letter it can help to improve the number of clicks to that web page. This is also the best way to improve incoming organic traffic and ranking of a website.
How to Write a Meta Description?
There are many tips you can follow while writing the meta description for your web page. Here are some effective options for you to succeed in writing a compelling meta description that can improve the click-through rate of your web page.
1. Use actionable words in the meta description:
When you write meta description you can follow the Call to Action model. Include words like learn more, know more, Grab, discover, etc in your meta tags to attract user’s attention. These actionable words will create curiosity in the audience and make them click on the website link. Let people know that they will get something useful by clicking on the given link.
2. Provide an answer to their search:
When someone sees the meta description and clicks on the website it is better to provide the correct solution for them. If you fail to provide an accurate answer they will go back from your website and that can affect the site reputation. To avoid further complication, you can concentrate on giving the quality content which exactly reflects the sentence you have given in the meta description.
Bounce rate is a very important ranking factor. If you want to improve the ranking, try to reduce the bounce rate of your website. Create a sentence that can describe the content and give them a reason to why they should read the content. All these factors are very important if you are looking for a better response to your webpage online.
3. Create a sentence with minimal words
It is better to make the meta description short as Google cuts down the sentence after a certain limit. It doesn’t actually measure the character in your meta description. Google uses pixels to measure the length, but you can limit the number of characters to 155 to avoid many complications.
It is better to write a meaningful sentence with minimal words than having a long sentence which may not be complete because of the sentence length limit. There is a tool which you can use to measure the sentence length which is known as SEOmofo
4. Avoid overstuffing of keywords:
This is a very important aspect you need to know while creating meta description. You can use just one or two keywords in the Meta description. Overstuffing of keywords may lead to a penalty from Google. Also. people will lose trust in your website if they cannot find what they are looking from your website. They actually click on your website by reading the meta description.
So, better to stay away from cheating your audience by giving wrong information in the meta description and overstuffing of keywords.
5. Write specific meta description:
Like we discussed in previous points, you cannot cheat your audience by giving irrelevant meta description. If you want to get a good response from your audience it is better to give a relevant meta description that actually describes the content of your website.
Make it more specific using relevant keywords and connect with your audience through better quality contents. If they trust your website, then no need to look back. They will start to follow your website for every query. This mainly depends on the genuine meta description you add with your web page.
6. The meta description should be unique:
Other than writing more specific meta description one more important factor is there to notice. That is the uniqueness of the meta description. If you can create something attractive that can help the audience to understand the content, it can help to improve the CTR of your web page.
You can make it unique by avoiding the repetition of words in the content. Create something new related to the content and post it as the meta description of the web page. A unique meta description is always valuable and can help to earn more organic traffic also.
7. Provide unique value proposition:
You can write a meta description with full of useful information. They should get a clear idea about the content by reading the meta description itself. What can they get by clicking on the web page, why should I visit that page, etc are some sort of questions you will have to answer through your meta description. That is what you can offer to your audience while creating a meta description.
By reading this, the audience should understand the main aim of your web page and they should click on it. Show the best thing about the web page with better words and make people click on it to know more.
8. Do something more:
Google offers you many features to make your meta description more reachable online. For that, you can use structured data and feature your meta description as a rich snippet. This can increase more visibility online and increase the organic traffic of your website too. So, it is better to start implementing structured data which can be a good ranking signal for your website.
Google considers websites with snippets as a good source of information and gives some extra preference while ranking. There are many online tools that can help you in building structured data. Try any of them and start to do something fun and interesting with your website.
9. Try to add Google Ad words:
Google Ad words are powerful and bring your content a good ranking position nowadays. You include popular Google Ad words in your meta description to bring it to the top position in SERP. But make sure to do at a moderate level. Overdoing can lead you to many problems.
When you add Google Ad words in your meta description the click-through rates will improve and can also be a good ranking for the content. Make it look like a natural description than an artificial one to get more acceptance from the audience.
10. Follow trial and error method
When you create a meta description for your content, it is very important to track the performance and implement changes if needed. You can monitor how the meta description increases the number of clicks of the site and change it whenever you need. This will help you to know what works and what not. Experimenting something new every time can help you learn something.
But you should stay away from copying the same meta description for multiple contents. It can affect the reputation of your website badly. When there are several web pages with the same meta description there is a chance to show all of them together for the same search which is irrelevant.
11. Quality of content:
More than anything above, the quality of content is very important. Even though everything else regarding SEO changes now and then content quality is something that is still the same. Without quality contents, your website cannot withstand the competition.
Good content with enough information is the best thing that you can give to your audience. Google always want to give better content for users and as a part of it, Google implements new algorithms and strategies to do that.
Conclusion:
A meta description is still an important part of SEO. There is no change in the fact that a good meta tag can improve the traffic towards a website and can also help to increase the ranking. With a good meta description, it is better to check the quality of your website content. If the content is not good people will click on the back button from your website which can badly affect your website performance.
So, whenever you write a meta description include genuine facts about the content and make it more actionable using proper words. What are your strategies while creating meta description? Tell us more about your meta description writing tactics in the comment section below. It can be useful for so many starters out there who want to pursue their career in SEO.