Let’s start this discussion with a very basic question – What is a meta description?
The meta description is a piece of HTML code that makes its appearance in the <head> section of a webpage. Here, have a look at this below and you’ll understand what I am talking about.
The meta description tells major search engines (such as Google, bing etc.) a brief description of a particular page.
They play a vital role in search engine optimization. An amazing meta description won’t directly affect your SEO ranking but it can help to draw in more relevant visitors to your target page.
In here I have compiled a few tips for writing the perfect meta descriptions. Take a peek.
1. Keep your meta description unique, useful and SHORT
If you want to get effective SEO results, you have to keep your meta descriptions short and unique.
As I said, major search engines do not take meta descriptions into consideration, especially when page rankings are concerned. But they do take them seriously for deciding whether a potential site is spam or not.
Therefore, it becomes mighty important for you to chalk out the perfect meta description to keep that nasty spam categorization at bay.
One more thing that you should remember while writing these small snippets is to keep the information useful by including a call for action statement in order to generate more clicks. Keep it short like I said before, preferably within 160 characters (including space).
2. Include a call for action statement
Including a call for action statement in your meta descriptions is some sort of an invitation to your visitors to click on the link that directs back to your website.
A tip: Consider including things like “Learn”, “Grab,” “Play,” “Discover” to make them appear more intriguing to the visitors in general. You might be able to generate more clicks through this simple tactic.
3. Include a statement in your Meta Description as if you are providing a solution or a Benefit
You have only 160 characters to create the maximum impression on your audience at first glance. So every character counts. Use in the best possible manner.
Temptation can work wonders. Provide them with a solution or a benefit that your business ACTUALLY provide. DO NOT trick your audience into clicking on the link by writing some irrelevant services/products that are not provided by your website. Google and other major search engines honestly don’t like that.
4. Deceiving browsers is a big no-no
If your meta description’s in a written specifically in a manner to deceive the browsers back to your targeted webpage, be prepared to see a rise in your bounce rate.
I have also notice several SEO professionals stuffing in dozens of irrelevant keywords in their meta descriptions just to generate more clicks. Now this is a poor practice indeed and is detected to be a form of keyword stuffing.
Many SEO professionals actually nurse this belief that the more times they use a keyword in a content, the more times it’s going to increase its effectiveness. They sometimes believe that if they use a keyword 5 times in the content, the result’s going to improve 5 times in comparison to that of the initial one.
No, it doesn’t happen in that way. In fact, that practice is deemed as unethical by major search engines. Search engines can easily and conveniently detect these unethical practices and take immediate measures to nip them in the bud. So don’t even try to fool the system. It might come back to haunt you in future.
5. Make your meta descriptions specific and more relevant
Your meta descriptions should be as generic as possible. Most of your audience is going to be average internet users who probably won’t be able to comprehend the technicalities of a meta description well.
Therefore, it’ll be best if you write simple, relevant and specific information in your meta descriptions that can be understood in a jiffy. Using fluffy and technical terms will do you more harm than good to be honest.
Writing the perfect SEO-friendly content for your meta descriptions can get demanding indeed. But with a bit of practice and trial and error effort, you can actually get it right to perfection. Just follow these tips mentioned up above and you’ll definitely get it to perfection in no time. Ciao!
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