TL;DR – What Is a Meta Description Tag?
A meta description is a short HTML tag (max ~160 characters) that summarizes a webpage and appears below the title in search engine results.
It doesn’t directly affect rankings, but a well-written one improves click-through rates and user engagement.
Best practices include using target keywords, writing in active voice, matching the page’s content, and including a clear call to action.
Keep it concise and compelling – 100–150 characters is ideal to ensure the full text displays on Google.
Google may override your meta description if it thinks other content on the page better matches a user’s search query.
On-Page SEO: Meta Description
When it comes to on-page SEO, you may have heard about title tags. Well, there’s one element that needs to be paired up with the title: a meta description. If you skip an effective SEO meta description, your web pages will miss out on precious ranking points with Google and other search engines. With this in mind, we’ve put together these meta description guidelines for you to follow so you can ensure that you undertake meta description best practices at all times.
What is a Meta Description in SEO?
Before diving in any further, it’s important to actually understand what a meta description is and how it functions. As the name suggests, the meta description is a portion of HTML that is used to describe a specific webpage.
You might wonder, how long can a meta description be? In most cases, the meta description length usually maxes out at 160 characters – and this piece of information is displayed underneath the meta title (also known as the title tag) in search results. There is no meta description word limit as such; just keep an eye on the character meta description length for SEO purposes.
You may have heard of it, but what is a meta title? In simple terms, it’s the part of the HTML document that signals to search engines the title of your webpage. Plus, there’s also this next question to ask: how many characters in meta title are needed? Generally, the meta title length is recommended to sit around 50-60 characters for maximum impact.
Below is an effective meta title example:
The meta title and description are combined together to provide searchers and search engines with informative details about the webpage. The more optimised these two elements are, the more Google and other search engines will recognise what the page contains – and this is essential for receiving a favourable search ranking.
Why Should You Have a Meta Description?
An SEO friendly meta description acts as a type of organic ad text for Google, tempting searchers to click on the link to your webpage. Therefore, the best meta descriptions increase the click-through rate of your organic search results. A compelling meta content description will also give search engine users an insight into what to expect from clicking on your link, so it’s important to get it right.
Why Are They Important for SEO?
Now, with this understanding, let’s focus on the actual meta description and how to create a quality meta description.
How to Create and Edit a Meta Description Tag
If you want to create or edit the meta description, this can be done directly through the HTML code. Simply locate the meta description HTML code, which is found within the <head> tags, and alter the text.
The process changes if you want to use your website platform to alter the meta description – plus, it’s different for each platform. As it’s currently the most popular option on the market, let’s use WordPress as an example.
Knowing where to write meta description in WordPress is essential to your SEO efforts. However, if you want to know how to add meta title and description in WordPress, you’ll need to download an applicable plugin like Yoast before you start thinking about editing the meta description. In Yoast, there will be a section underneath each page or post where you can change the meta description as you see fit. If you want to edit WordPress meta description, simply click ‘edit’ on the relevant post you wish to modify and change your meta description via the Yoast plugin.
How Long Should a Meta Description Be for Best Results?
Regarding how to write a great meta description, the recommended meta description length is often one of the biggest discussion points for newcomers. In general, people learning about this crucial aspect of website development and SEO want to know the meta description character limit and what length is best.
Perhaps surprising to some, but the meta description can actually be any length; there is no max length for meta description – yet, that doesn’t mean you should write a mini essay as your description. You might also ask how many characters are in Google meta description? According to Google meta description length guidelines, you should aim for something between 100 and 150 characters. If your description goes beyond 150 characters, it’s likely the excess text will be cut off by Google.
Not sure how many characters your description features? There are meta title and meta description checker tools available online, so you can get clarity on this. Alternatively, you can paste your text into Microsft Word and press the ‘Word Count’ button to get the total and view the meta description number of characters you have used.
How to Write a Concise Meta Description
Given the Google meta description character limit, writing good blog descriptions or page descriptions that contain the relevant information you need to convey without going overboard is a must. The content on your page will provide your audience with the in-depth knowledge they seek, and the meta description is your chance to tell users this and draw them in.
The best meta descriptions are a quick summary of the page or the main point from the page that will appeal to readers. However, it’s not possible to control what Google displays in the search results; sometimes, it will choose to show a few sentences of website copy, while other times it will show the meta description. In any case, keep the meta description short so that if Google does display your meta description, it will be shown in full.
Meta Description: Best Practices to Follow
If you’re wondering how to write a good meta description, you’ve landed in the right place. We’ve boiled down the SEO meta description best practices you need to take into account when crafting yours.
While it’s true that a meta description is not the biggest factor in ranking high with search engines, it still plays a significant role in any SEO campaign. A compelling description that summarises your webpage can be the difference between a user selecting your website rather than one of your competitors. Not to mention, attentive keyword placement is also rewarded by search engines.
With that said, here are a few points to remember when producing an SEO description:
Use The Right Keywords
Before you think about concocting the meta description, you need to decide on the right keywords to build it around. As with anything related to SEO, there are meta keywords best practices to follow when selecting the keywords for you.
Along with the target keyword – which should also be in the title tag – think about adding one or two secondary keywords as well.
It can also work to incorporate common key phrases within the meta description. When someone searches with these phrases, they’ll appear in bold within your description. It might be a small point, but you take every opportunity for your description to stand out from the rest and work in harmony with your SEO efforts – not against them.
Captivate Your Audience
If you want to know how to write meta descriptions, the main point to remember is this: you’re entertaining your audience. It’s important to appeal to search engines, sure; however, the ultimate goal of the description is to draw new visitors to your website.
If you’re not sure how to captivate with your words, take a look at this meta description example for making pancakes:
The description in this piece is simple in its approach on the surface, yet it packs in plenty of details. First, the “easiest ever” label is something that is instantly going to lure people in. Secondly, the information that the pancakes are great for various situations and can be sweet or savoury opens the search potential. Then, the fun little sentence at the end showcases personality – a great quality to get people to warm to the content creator.
Still not sure your description hits the mark? If so, there are meta description checker tools available. Or, you could always ask for the opinions of others and see if your description works as a snappy, engaging slice of written content.
Consider the Audience
Another best practice for meta description involves considering the audience’s needs. The best meta descriptions clearly tell your audience what you are offering them and why they should visit your site or choose your service or product.
Evaluating readers’ needs is easier for specific pages rather than a homepage meta description, as you can tailor your meta description to a particular service you are offering. However, a good homepage meta description puts emphasis on your brand, what you offer, and why people should buy from you.
Call to Action
If you analyse SEO description examples, you’ll see that many of them feature a call to action (CTA) of some sort. The reason for this is simple: an effective Google meta description is one that tells a user the action they need to take and how they can do so.
There are many different paths you can go down with a CTA. For instance, if you have a promotion running on a product, you could use something like “Buy now while stocks last!” Another call-to-action example might be “Contact us today for a free quote!” if you supply a certain service.
Other examples of a call to action meta description include:
- Explore the collection
- Browse the collection
- Discover the new collection
- Shop now
As you can see, a call to action in a meta description keeps the reader engaged and encourages them to act fast in using your service or purchasing your product.
Use the Active Voice
To write the best page description, it needs to be written in the active voice to invite people onto your page. Meta descriptions consider the audience’s reason for visiting your page; therefore, your description’s message should not be boring, difficult, or confusing to read – which the passive voice can often be. Your description has to be obvious so that people know what to expect on your page, and the best and easiest language to portray this is the active voice.
Furthermore, good meta descriptions need to be active and motivating and directly address the reader. If your blog post is about party planning tips, for example, then the following meta description example SEO tells the audience exactly what they will get if they click on the link:
Get ready to host the party of your dreams with these super practical party planning tips to keep you and your guests happy.
Make Sure It Matches the Content on Your Web Page
When writing the best page description – and with any type of meta writing for that mater – it must match the content on your web page. If you have written a meta description that is misleading or does not provide a true reflection of a page’s content, your website bounce rate will increase.
If you are struggling with what to put in meta description, take it back to the basics of what your page offers and go from there. If in doubt, simplicity is always the better, safer option when pondering how to write a high quality meta description.
Don’t Overdo It
As mentioned already, the SEO description length shouldn’t go beyond 150 characters. However, it doesn’t mean you need to stretch your description to that limit for the sake of it. If you feel the description fits everything required at, say, 100 characters, stick with that limit.
How to Get Google to Update Meta Description
Even if you have written a meta description for your page, Google might decide not to show it. Instead of your meta description, Google could choose to display its own snippet.
There are a few reasons for this:
Google hasn’t crawled your page yet
If you’ve updated your meta description recently, then Google may not have crawled and indexed your new page information yet. This will prevent your new information from displaying.
The Google snippet is better
The Google description that the search engine has chosen to show might answer a search query better than your own meta description. When Google favours its own description over yours, there’s nothing you can do to change this other than experiment with different descriptions. If your page meta description is too generic, salesy, or relevant for more than a few keywords and phrases, Google might ignore your meta description.
The meta description tags are missing
The HTML code of your website should contain a meta description tag in HTML. It is this meta description HTML that Google uses to display your page information in search engine results.
Here is an HTML meta tags SEO example of what this code should look like:
<meta name =”description” content=”description goes here”/>
A meta robots tag is disabling the meta description
An incorrectly implemented meta robots tag will prevent your page from displaying the meta description. A ‘nosnippet’ or ‘max-length: 0’ value will block your meta description from Google.
To Conclude
Whether you’re link building or creating YouTube content, SEO involves an extensive amount of different elements – and one of those is the SEO page description. These descriptions are an integral piece of the entire, ever-changing puzzle that is SEO and marketing.
To devise an effective page description and write meta descriptions – be that a meta description for an about us page, a contact us page meta description, or a category page or blog post – you have to write something that sells your website or page to both users and search engines. Accomplish that, and you’ll have yourself some top-tier meta descriptions that boost your search engine rankings and attract readers to your pages.
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