The title and description of a webpage are the first things a user will lay their eyes upon when they see your website in search results. In this article, we’ll teach you to create snippets that will help boost organic traffic to your web resource, improve your search engine rankings, and make your pages stand out. Keep reading to learn more!
Why you should optimize your meta descriptions
If you look up a question “do meta descriptions affect a website’s rankings?” you will get a clear negative response. Due to this many marketers don’t pay much attention to snippets. Yet, while they don’t directly influence web page’s ranking, their impact on SEO can be quite substantial, and here’s why.
Meta descriptions are not used by search engines directly to determine a webpage’s place in the search results, but they strongly affect user behaviour, namely, their decision to click on a link, which is referred to as CTR.
Google analyzes user behaviour on a site as part of the site’s ranking process. Meta descriptions are important because they can convince users that YOUR link will lead to the answer to their question. Therefore, a compelling description is the formula of success when it comes to increasing your CTR.
CTR is an important metric for Google and Bing, based on which it becomes clear whether a search result is clicked or not, and whether this result is relevant to the user’s query. So how can we improve CTR? By creating meta descriptions that grab the user’s attention, of course.
Evidently, we can safely assume that a good meta description can improve CTR indicators, and therefore affect the site’s position in search results. Of course, this places snippets among the top relevant ranking factors in SEO, despite its indirect impact.
You will be pleased to know that improving snippets doesn’t involve much SEO trickery, but mainly a good writing skill, which brings us back to this article’s main topic: how do you write descriptions that get clicks? Let’s learn how to do so right now!
How to write efficient meta descriptions
Here are our 10 tips for perfecting your meta descriptions, masking them truly outstanding and capable of helping you stay on top of your competitors.
Be brief but descriptive.
Your snippet should provide users with a clear idea of what your page is about. It should be rather short yet still detailed enough so that it helps understand the premise of your webpage.
Don’t repeat yourself.
Writing unique snippets is important. Try to create different descriptions for each specific page and avoid using templates. All your website’s important, key pages should have unique meta descriptions.
Don’t sound like a computer.
Snippets are written by people and for people – they are not just SEO tools. Only use words you normally use in your vocabulary, avoid long hard-to-follow sentences, incorrectly built sentences, etc. Also, don’t overuse keywords, capital letters, advertising slogans, etc.
Many SEO specialists struggle with their wording and text presentation, so they often require help perfecting their writing skills. TutorDoctor can help get a better grasp on creative writing and put together attractive and engaging snippets.
Be persuasive.
Great marketing texts include a touch of persuasiveness. To get clicks, your meta descriptions should sound welcoming and leave readers eager for more information. Don’t be afraid to sound a little excited and enticing – there’s nothing more unclickable than a bland emotionless text.
Kindle curiosity.
One of the most compelling things you can do with your meta description is to generate curiosity. By the time a user reads about your page, he should be curious about what kind of information it will contain. You should provide enough information to explain what the page is about, but not too much lest it ruins the curiosity factor.
However, do not use descriptions to mislead users by pointing out information that is not true or not contained on the page.
Make meta descriptions of the correct length.
Information in this regard varies, but most marketers suggest that meta description should be around 150 words. Keep in mind that short snippets are rarely informative enough, but too long ones can get boring to read and are sometimes cut off by search engines. Remember then when it comes to meta descriptions, the quality of words is more important than quantity.
Prepare a list of relevant keywords.
In order to correctly compose meta tags and descriptions, you must have a list of relevant keywords, maybe even specific for each page of your website. For your description, you can use queries that did not fit into the title but also duplicate words from your main search phrases.
Use 1-3 main keywords within a meta description. In addition, the main search key in search results is highlighted in bold font, which will further attract the user’s attention. Also, it is recommended to place high-frequency keywords at the beginning.
Keep on top of updates.
Your snippets must be up-to-date, reflecting the current state of a specific page. Hence, if you change any important data on your page, edit the meta description so that it would correctly correspond to the content of a webpage.
Be specific.
Describe a specific page of a site, not the site as a whole. Ideally, you should create a separate meta description for each page. It’s labour-intensive but quite effective. From a point of view of search engine recommendations, the worst course of action is having the same meta description for all pages of the site.
Finish with a call to action.
Think of descriptions as an advertisement for your page or post and end them with a clear and effective Call-To-Action.
When all is said and done
At the end of the day, meta descriptions are worth dedicating some of your SEO efforts too. To compose good descriptions, you should not only adhere to the above-mentioned recommendations but also put your own creative spin on them.
At the very least, you shouldn’t neglect them: remember that your meta description is the face of your webpage – they are like scouts that meet your potential customers even before they visit your resource. Investing appropriate time and effort into your descriptions means being ahead of the game!