Meta description

What is a Meta Description?

A meta description is an HTML attribute that provides a brief summary of a web page. It essentially explains what the reader can expect to find on the website. Search engines like Google often display the meta description in search results, which can impact click-through rates.

In addition to search engine rankings, it's just as crucial to present the content effectively. Therefore, having a good meta description that tells what the website offers is essential.

Meta descriptions can vary in length. Since Google and other search engines typically cut off after about 160 characters, we recommend keeping the meta description between 100 and 160 characters. It should be long enough to describe what the reader will find on the page and effectively convey what the page is about. This increases the chances of the reader clicking on your website.

Optimal Format

Meta descriptions are extremely important for search results and generating clicks. These brief paragraphs serve as the website's opportunity to "advertise" its content to searchers. They also give searchers the chance to determine if the content is relevant and contains the information they're looking for.

The meta description of a page should use the keywords that the page is targeting and create a compelling description that encourages the searcher to click on the page's link. The content should be directly relevant to the page it describes and ideally unique from descriptions of other pages. This significantly increases the chances that the searcher will click on your page.

SEO Done Right

The meta description is essential for promoting your website because it leads readers to a web page. This makes it an important part of search marketing. It's crucial to create a readable and persuasive description of your website by using essential keywords related to the page's content. It can significantly improve your website's click-through rate.

If you want to maximize click-through rates on search engine result pages, it's important to note that Google and other search engines bold keywords in the description when they match the search. The bold text catches the searcher's eye, so you should match your descriptions to the keywords as closely as possible.

Similar to meta titles, it's important that meta descriptions on each page are unique. This helps avoid confusion with other pages that have similar content and/or keywords.

Do not include double quotation marks. For each character used, Google and other search engines cut the corresponding amount of text. You have a maximum of 160 characters displayed in the meta description, and the smartest thing to do is to eliminate all non-alphanumeric characters. If it's essential to include quotation marks in the text, you can use the HTML entity instead. This way, you avoid some of the abbreviation and can include most of the text in the description.

Sometimes You Don't Need a Meta Description

Although it makes sense to write a good meta description rather than having search engines handle it their way, you can use this general rule to determine if you should write your meta description:

If your page is one of those targeted by one to three frequently searched terms or search descriptions, you can write your meta text that directly addresses what the user is searching for. This increases the chances that your page will be picked up in search engines like Google since search engines typically display the keywords that were searched for.

A Caveat About Omitting Meta Descriptions

It's important to remember that social media platforms like Facebook often use a page's meta description tag as the description displayed when the page is shared on their sites. Without the meta description code, social sharing sites can only use the first text they can find. So, the initial part of your text is very important for describing the content on the page when it's shared on such platforms.