A lot of people ask me how to write SEO meta descriptions easily and the funny thing is that they don’t even know what meta data is. So, let’s get back to the basics. If you haven’t read my post on SEO Best Practices, I recommend that you start there first.
Meta descriptions have always been an indispensable part of a search engine result page is not likely to change. Meta description is a snippet of up to about 140-160 characters. It is a tag in HTML of a web page which summarises a page content. The meta description appears under your page URLs in the search results. If meta descriptions are optimised, then they can help Google to rank pages and websites. The purpose of the meta description is to generate click-throughs from the search engine on your page.
A meta description tag looks something like this:
<head> <meta name="description" content="Here is the description of the webpage."> </head>
SEO Meta Data is Important
Meta description helps you to boost click-through rates and visits on your page through organic growth. The more attractive and descriptive your meta description is, the more people will click on your link than someone’s else page. When your content gets shared on social media such as Facebook or Twitter, then also your meta description is displayed. So it just not only drives search engine traffic but social media traffic as well. Meta description is your compact space to explain what page offers.
If you grasp the customer psychology and give them what they need specifically, you can decrease the cost of the advertising outdoor, and the outcome can be better.
How to Write Meta Descriptions for SEO
Time needed: 1 hour
Writing a great meta description is key to ranking your content on Google. Keeping these nine steps in mind while learning how to write SEO meta descriptions will help you achieve your results faster. To write a good meta description and to increase click-through on your page, the following are the things which you should keep in mind.
- Display Keywords
Make sure that your essential keywords for the webpage shown in the meta description as the search engine highlights in bold if they find searchers query in your meta description.
- Avoid Keyword Stuffing
Your Meta description looks like a readable copy to the searcher. Don’t stuff too many keywords in your meta description as it doesn’t help the searcher.
- Use Related Content
Your information must be related to the content of the webpage. It should be appealing and treat it like an advert of your webpage.
- Keep it Under 160 Characters
Make sure that your meta description should not be longer than 135-160 characters long and make sure that all keywords written in front.
- Do Not Use Duplicate Tags
Do not duplicate your meta descriptions, as titles of your meta descriptions must also be written differently for every webpage. Google can punish you for mass copying your meta descriptions.
- Keep it Conversational
Your meta description should be conversational, not write for search engines or algorithms, write it for the searchers as natural language communicates better.
- Try to Relate to the User
Meta description is like a USP of your webpage. Emotional psychology has always helped to reach the product to the audience. So you can add star ratings, customer ratings, product information in the description when you learn how to write SEO meta descriptions easily.
- Use Active Voice Only
Your meta description should be in active voice, motivating, and addressed directly to the searcher. A searcher should know what he will get if he clicks on the link.
- Don’t Use Non-Alphanumeric Characters
While writing your meta description, eliminate the use of the non-alphanumeric characters like Ampersands (&), em-dashes(-), plus signs (+), and other special characters. These characters are not easily readable by your search engine.
Meta descriptions are not going anywhere from the Google algorithms soon. It is a small but crucial aspect of your search engine optimisation. Many businesses leave this out and miss the prominent opportunity to increase the CTR. As soon as you will learn the craft of writing the meta description, sooner you will be able to boost your engagement and SEO of your webpage, and you can race with your competitors. Hopefully, this column gives you all the guided points about the meta description that you can use while writing your column to boost your SEO rankings.
