Welcome to the SEO tutorial, and today we will cover SEO meta description. The meta description is a tag in an HTML that will describe your web page content in a precise and attractive way. We call it an SEO meta description, because in a search page it will be shown as a page snippet to attract the visitors click.
SEO Meta Description – Definition
The meta description is a Unique selling point of your web pages. Effectively written meta description will let you earn more clicks. The meta description can be written using the meta tag of the HTML or by using a plugins.
We call it an SEO meta description, because earlier meta tags were very important for the SEO point of views. Now Google or Major search engines don’t rank website on the basis of the meta tags. But yes, they will consider the meta description while handling the search queries. The proper use of the keywords in the meta description will give you better click through rate, and the overuse of the keywords will let you remove from the search pages.
Can Read: Why keyword stuffing is not good for your website?
What to do?
The meta description has to be exciting and to the point, and you can consider three things for a good meta description:
- Precise – The SEO meta description should be precise and to the point, because anything more than 160 characters will violate the search engines guidelines.
- Eye catchy – Nobody likes to see boring stuffs or copied stuff. Just market your web page with an interesting and a pulse raiser sentence.
- Tricky – Sometimes tricking your visitors will help them to visit your site. Let’s say for example, your visitor is looking for what is hidden text, and here you can provide more information about the black hat SEO and its drawbacks. It will improve your page views, and hence it will decrease your bounce rate as well.
What not to do?
- Avoid overloading – Yes, avoid overusing of the keywords, and don’t exceed the limit of the meta description. Because it won’t be considered as a good SEO meta description.
- Avoid Misleading – Yes, if you will put wrong information or non-relevant information and that too just for the sake of getting the clicks or appear in a search result, then it will cost you a penalty. In fact, you will lose visitor’s interest and hence it will increase your bounce rate.
- No lazy description – Yes, we have seen many times, because of the laziness or lack of information, people used to leave the meta description or try to put description in a hurry which is not at all interesting one. Probably this will give you place in Google search results, but it will not catch your prospects eyes.
SEO Meta Description – Learn its Importance
- The eye catchy meta description will give you more clicks.
- The optimized meta description will let you considered by the search engines.
- No meta description means that the search engine will show any part of your web page in the page snippet. Thus any part will confuse the readers, and hence you will lose clicks from them as well.
- You can put keywords in the meta description that will be shown in bold or highlighted way by the Google. This will make sure that reader’s will get what they want, and if you have used keywords, then you have a good chance to improve the click through rate.
- You can use 155 characters to impress the search spiders to show your pages in search results, and the appearance will create more chances for the clicks.
SEO Meta Description – Example
Now we will try to understand the difference between the Good SEO meta description and bad SEO meta description. Let’s start with the bad example first:
Bad meta description – Example
We have seen many websites using multiple and confusing keywords in the meta description, and this type of meta description are not good SEO meta description at all. Let’s for example:
You have a website that writes about making money, SEO, Web hosting, and blogging. It does not mean that you will put whole your category in every meta description, like “ blogging, good blog, bad blog, SEO, white hat SEO, black hat SEO, make money, become rich, earn high etc.”
Don’t you think this will confuse the Spiders, and they won’t be able to show the confusing web information to their searchers? The result will be the less clicks and hence low blog traffic.
<html> <head> <meta name="description" content=" blogging, good blog, bad blog, SEO, white hat SEO, black hat SEO, make money, become rich, earn high "> </head> <body> </body> </html>
Good SEO Meta description – Example
The good meta description will let your visitor and search spiders to understand the advertising of your web page, and hence if found accurate and relevant then it will give you more click through rates. Let’s see the example of the good meta description.
Let’s suppose you are writing about how to become rich from blogging article, and this will go to your blog category, then the ideal description would be:
<html> <head> <meta name="description" content="Blogging can be started as a hobby, but do you know blogging will let you earn money or make you rich? "> </head> <body> </body> </html>
In the above example, we have used our keyword ‘blogging’ twice and tried to market our content in very short description. You can make more catchy descriptions by playing with words. Just forget to overload your description with the keywords.
Conclusion
We have just covered what is SEO meta description, its examples and what to do or not to do? The meta tag will help you to write meta description, and now it’s up to you, how effectively you write your SEO meta description to improve more clicks.