With the ever-changing SEO landscape, you might be wondering if meta descriptions and titles are still a concern to bring in traffic to the website.
Well, meta tags and descriptions often work behind the scenes, and communicate to search engines about the types of content that you post on your website.
However, not everyone knows about meta tags and descriptions, let alone their benefits and how meta descriptions can improve your website rankings.
Hold on, do meta descriptions still matter in SEO?
Yes! They do!
Will they give me leads and conversions?
Yes, it indirectly adds weightage to your SEO game and helps bring up the page higher on the SERPs (Search Engine Result Pages).
Regardless, every part of SEO that you do is crucial, hence, meta tags are important too.
If you want your content to rank higher and take the first page of SERPs, then here we have gathered up some of the best practices for writing meta descriptions. To bring in focus on you, to support and to add more weight, remember these 10 mistakes to avoid when writing meta tags.
There’s a lot of room for a search result, especially on a mobile devices.
Remember the general thumb rule of meta description is 160 characters (for desktop) and 120 characters (for mobile).
It’s interesting that Google tends to be less-strict with characters if they are authoritative and eye-catchy!
So, even if you have written the most ideal summary, Google will truncate it or more likely, it will just rewrite it altogether if your description is beyond character limits.
You have to keep your meta descriptions quite concise, clear and extremely sharp- because it does attract clicks!
I mean, too short!
We talked about writing long meta descriptions, but writing short ones can lack substance and quality.
Of course, brevity is important, but ensure to make the most of the space allotted to you, to promote and summarize the content.
Search engines will view these short meta descriptions as low quality descriptions and content.
Short descriptions can hurt your page ranking and most certainly Google will replace the description content with Google’s chosen content.
The whole reason for meta description to exist is to give a brief and summary of your content, and if your description doesn’t give an idea of your content, then it’d be a blunder!
A meta description should match your content, because an inconsistent meta description could confuse the search engines, and rank your content for the wrong searches.
Well, there could be many instances, where you aren’t able to write a perfect description or a tag, but remember that only a good and relevant description can have your content ranked and indexed properly.
Make sure that you use the right keywords in your meta tag and description that’s the most relevant and relatable to your content.
Of course, descriptions need creativity, but it’s important to add keywords as well that your customers would be searching on the search engines.
Remember, search engines crawls the first sentence of the description, hence if you place the most ranking and high volume keyword in the description, search engines will be able to crawl through these descriptions and content, and your page will rank!
Did you know meta descriptions are one of the major ways to show creativity with on-page SEO? You can’t afford to write boring meta descriptions.
With creative descriptions, you have the chance to stand out in front of your audience. Well, you have to keep a few things in mind:
Don’t confuse your statement with too much boasting or bragging- and as mentioned, try to keep your whole description creative.
If you are duplicating your meta descriptions that’s appearing on different websites, then that would be the result of your corner-cutting.
We all know that search engines frown upon duplicate and copy content, and this also applies to meta descriptions.
Make sure that all your descriptions are engaging, and unique- or else your search engine crawlers might just pass it along.
And never use AI or tools to auto-generate meta descriptions, because such tools will be just disregarded or overlooked.
I know, search engines are important, but focusing only on search engines won’t give you any better results.
You have to think less about search engines and focus more on readers- because a good amount of traffic will impress search engines, very well!
Give your readers a value and reasons to click on the link. Remember, meta descriptions are crucial for gaining click-through rates and not majorly important for search engines.
The more and more clicks you gain on your descriptions, the higher your content will rank on the search engines.
That’s another major mistake that you can never do!
I know, copy pasting a couple of lines from the already written article might seem easy, but let me tell you, you are doing no good to your page or your content.
When it comes to meta descriptions and tags, you have to be literally unique and fill in words and phrases different from the content.
Of course, you have to keep the context and the subject same, you can’t change it’s meaning.
If you are keen on marketing your content, it’s important that you write effective meta tags- whether it’s title or description, keep it creative and engaging.
The main motive of writing a meta description is to convince your users and readers to choose your page or website over your competitors.
While there is no a single size for writing meta descriptions, there’s definitely a few rules that you must stand by:
Like I always say, keep your descriptions short, simple and precise- and of course have them written unique and creative.
Well, if you are able to write a creative-unique meta description, and yet have some space left to roll over for a CTA then you should definitely add it.
Just a nudge to your customer or your prospects will be enough for them to click on your page or link, instead of your competitors. (maybe they’re lacking that point).
There’s an underlying psychology with CTA that focuses on consumer benefits, and creates a sense of urgency and importance.
If users are clicking on your website and pages, that means it could increase the positioning of your ranking and your authority.
Isn’t that amazing to use all possible ways of increasing clicks and improve domain authority on the search engines?
Perhaps, you may have heard or probably (believed) that you don’t need meta descriptions and it’s not that important.
In that case, search engines might not care much about your meta description, it would just put up a few lines that’s not even relevant!
Remember, meta descriptions are an important part of on-page SEO. However, it’s easy to make mistakes when writing meta tags, but with these above mentioned pointers it’s simple to avoid these mistakes!
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