What is a Meta Description?
Among the meta tags, Meta Descriptions are very important. The meta description actually provides an abstract of website content that is usually hidden from viewers until they click on the website and is used by search engines to better understand your website.
Not too long ago, meta descriptions played an important role in your search engine rankings, though Google recently announced that the meta description tags had no direct impact on website rankings. If we look more closely at this sentence, we find that meta descriptions indirectly affect your ranking on Google! In this article, we’ll look at why and what?
How important is the Meta Description?
The contents of the meta description are visible in Google search results. When your website is shown to internet users among many other pages on Google, only the meta description and the page title are visible and these are the two factors that help users choose the best results.
For example, if you are looking for a plane ticket and among the results, a meta description of one of the websites includes the price, you are likely to prefer that website compared to others.
Each time a page of your website appears in Google search results, an Impression actually occurs, and when a user clicks on that result you get a Click. Click-Through Rate (CTR) of your website’s clickthrough rate on your Google search results page will greatly affect your Google ranking.
The higher the CTR of your website pages, the better your ranking will be in Google rankings, which better illustrates the importance of the meta description tag. Recent research shows that Google in its RankBrain algorithm attaches great importance to meta-explanations for increasing CTR click rates.
Note: Another factor affecting your website ranking is the bounce rate of your website pages. Bounce Rate is the percentage of people who leave your website without any useful activity or visit of another page and return to the search results page, which indicates to Google that your meta descriptions are correctly written and matches the content you have on the page or not.
5 Tips on how to write Meta Descriptions
Here are some tips for optimizing the meta description tag and enhancing the CTR.
1. Make the meta description unique
It is best to write meta descriptions for the home page and internal pages separately. In the past, when Google realized the same meta description was used on multiple pages it would have been highlighted on your Google Webmasters account, this information was visible in the HTML Improvements section, but with the new update in the console, this feature has been removed.
Different meta descriptions for different pages will provide a better user experience (UX) for your website visitors since each page has its own content, and the same meta description would not make sense.
Sometimes it is not possible to write meta descriptions for each page separately, especially for websites with more than 1000 pages, in which case complete the meta descriptions for the first page and main pages of your website and leave the rest blank for other pages or sections.
2. Watch the number of characters used in meta descriptions
While there is no limit to the number of characters used, Google only displays 150 to 170 characters in your meta description in the results page, optimize it by including your keywords at the beginning of the meta description. If your text is more than the standard Google space, only the beginning of it will be displayed and then the rest will be ignored.
3. Use your keywords in the meta description
There are no restrictions on meta descriptions for keywords, you should at least have one, but it is recommended that you do not use more than one or two keywords per meta description. On the Google results page, the keywords in the meta description tag will sometimes appear in a bolder font, which will help attract more visitors.
4. Don’t use mathematical characters
Search engines recognize characters like +, -, and ” as HTML code. If you use these letters in meta descriptions, Google may identify it as a code and ignore it altogether. You need to use simple texts to optimize meta descriptions.
5. Use attractive phrases that fit your business
Meta descriptions should be in such a way that they drive visitors to your website. It is a smart move to include different, specialized business information along with keywords related to it in meta descriptions to provide different content. Take, for example, plane tickets, usually passengers are looking for the cheapest airplane tickets, and such a meta description can increase the chance of user clicking and clicking.
Meta Description in WordPress
WordPress CMS is the most common website design tool in the world. One of the most important reasons for the WordPress website design epidemic is the remarkable success of SEO in WordPress.
The reason for WordPress’s success in this area is to meet the standards by addressing the problems and the existence of powerful plug-ins. For example, the SEO WordPress plugin, known as Yoast, offers attractive SEO features. One of these features is the ability to specify meta descriptions and a custom title for each page.
In the end, please note that with the new Google policies you can also succeed without using meta descriptions, but using it correctly will increase your chances of getting the results that you want.
