Meta Descriptions: SEO Best Practices
Utilizing meta descriptions is a good way to further increase your online presence and activity. However, before you start to use meta descriptions for garnering traffic to your website, you should fully understand how to best use them for your organization. Below we break down what makes up a meta description and how to best use meta descriptions for your organization's online presence and marketing efforts.
Why Use Meta Descriptions?
The purpose of the meta description is to influence the user’s decision to click on your title tag in the SERP (Search Engine Results Page), after a search term(s) are entered through a search engine. Writing a custom meta description can improve the possibility of your ideal end user engaging with your website's or landing pages' content, based on their search query.
Writing Meta Descriptions
When writing meta descriptions, it is vital to prioritize the importance of the web page you are writing them for. Not all your website's pages will fit the bill for needing a meta. Your important pages, like a home page, should have a meta description tied to it, but I would not recommend writing one for your privacy policy or a page that is a few layers deep on your website, because you will not benefit the same way. Why is that? Because your time is better spent optimizing meta descriptions for content that is always used by search engines and users, as opposed to only sometimes used by search engines.
We recommend that meta descriptions are written specifically for the landing pages listed below or pages that closely relate to the list below, that can be found on your website or landing page:
- Homepage
- Product pages (eCommerce)
- Searchable content on Google
- Organic SERP content that lacks descriptive text
It is also important to write unique meta descriptions that use active voice and include a call-to-action. You should include your targeted keyword in the meta, as well as write the meta in its entirety in a way that matches its landing pages content.
Meta Description Length
Search engines do not limit characters in the Meta descriptions, per say, but only a max of between 150 to 160 characters will be visible. For this reason, the limit is considered to be 155 characters with spaces. Keep in mind, less is more. It is good to write a clear, action-oriented description, and you will get more out of your meta description if you follow the character limit. You would not want to have all your great content and calls to action cut off because it exceeded Google search results displayed meta description character limit.
Conclusion
The smallest of details can make the biggest difference when it comes to running a successful marketing campaign. Finding the right team of talent and individuals can prove to be the most crucial factor. Our team can complement your current team, other agencies or even stand-in for your marketing team.
Be it SEO services, PPC management, PR, social media marketing, content marketing or email marketing; we analyze your metrics, build experiments to aid conversion and engagement, and take calculated risks that lead to big ideas, better user experiences and increased brand awareness.
Contact us to start a conversation, regarding your digital marketing needs today. We’d be happy to help. Want to learn more about what we do first? Check out how we can help here.