Increasing traffic to your site can be done by creating powerful SEO content along with a strong meta description. In this quick post, you’ll learn what a meta description is, why your site needs them, and how it can impact visitors. Let’s get started!
What Is a Meta Description?
A meta description is a very short summary of your page’s content. It is a concise explanation that gives readers an overview of the webpage they are about to enter. The objective of a meta description is to convince users to click-through and land on the page.
Usually, this snippet is no greater than 320 characters (depending on the search engine). It’s important to make your meta description engaging and worth reading because most likely, it’s the first thing that will pop up on a search engine such as Google. To find a page’s meta description on any website, you can do so by right-clicking the page and clicking on “view page source.”
How They Benefit Your Site
There are a few ways an effective meta description can improve the success of your site. Meta descriptions matter as they can impact your SEO (search engine optimisation) efforts. When a search engine brings forward a results page, the search engine results page (SERP) will often show the meta description to give viewers a summary of the page.
Consequently, an effective meta description can increase the click-through rate of your search results, meaning that people who come across your page in the search results will go ahead and click through to get to your entire site. To attract more traffic to your page, you want to create a good meta description.
Optimising a meta description is an important part of on-page SEO. Basically, it’s an HTML tag, and its main function for your page is to get visitors from search engines to click on your link. You can achieve high results by keeping in mind the characteristics of an effective meta description.
Characteristics of a Good Meta Description
Now that you know why meta descriptions matter, you need to learn how to better write one. Use good practices, include targeted keywords, and communicate the urgency of your products effectively. Along with this, keep the following elements in mind when writing your meta description:
- The optimal length of a meta description should be between 50-300 characters. There is a limit to how long it can be depending on the search engine (usually 320). Keep it within this range to obtain maximum results.
- It should have an engaging call to action. You want to convert your viewers to buyers. Consider “learn more” or “try it now”. In addition, using active-oriented language will grab viewers’ attention. Consider verbs like “learn”, “grab” or “discover”.
- Be sure your meta description matches the content of your website. You don’t want to trick your viewers. Along with this, how you phrase your description can make or break the search engine results you get.
- Just like the product you are selling, your description should be unique. If it’s a duplicate, the user experience won’t be as effective, thereby limiting traffic to your site.
- Briefly let your readers know why they should invest in your product. Communicate its benefits and advantages. Showing value and appealing to emotion will result in users clicking through to your site.
These characteristics can make the difference between a meta description that attracts viewers or drives them away. Correctly writing one can provide the competitive edge your site needs to get ahead of the competition. Writing a successful meta description takes some thought, but if written successfully, it can bring large results for you and your web page.
Web design and online marketing experts make the process of creating engaging, responsive, and interactive websites and meta descriptions easy. Putting your project in the hands of professionals takes some unneeded stress off your shoulders and allows you to focus your time and energy on other important factors.
