Visit any page you want, right click anywhere on the page and select VIEW SOURCE<\/strong><\/a> to look at the html contents of a page.<\/p>\n Search for meta name=”description”\u00a0<\/em>and you will see something like this:<\/p>\n The text that appears in the content=” “<\/em> is the custom description of the page.<\/p>\n For each and every entry shown in the search results, Google is creating a snippet based on the following:<\/p>\n Look at the example below:<\/p>\n In this case, Google decided to use the meta description provided using the Meta Description<\/em> settings of the Genesis Framework, but as we will see in the examples below, this is not always the case.<\/p>\n Depending on the user query, Google may decide to use a dynamic meta description created from content found on the page to make it more relevant.<\/p>\n Notice in the above snippet that the words \u201cdiy seo tutorial<\/a><\/strong>\u201d are shown in bold because they match exactly the search query.<\/p>\n This is how it looks in the backend of WordPress.<\/p>\n How long should a meta description be?<\/strong><\/p>\n Meta description length<\/strong><\/a> should be around 160 characters. According to Google Guidelines<\/strong><\/a>, a meta description might be a sentence or two or even a short paragraph.<\/em><\/p>\n How can I change the meta description?<\/strong><\/p>\n This depends on the platform you are using. If you are on WordPress you can either use an SEO optimized framework (like the Genesis framework shown in the example above) that provides for a special area to write your custom descriptions, or install Yoast SEO and make the changes in the meta description<\/em> settings.<\/p>\n If you are not on WordPress then look for a meta description<\/em> box available in the post or page settings.<\/p>\n Before getting into the guidelines on how to write good meta descriptions, it is necessary to understand what is the relationship between meta descriptions and SEO.<\/p>\n It should be noted that from a theoretical point of view, optimizing the meta descriptions is part of On-Page SEO<\/strong><\/a> which is one of the main pillars of Search Engine Marketing<\/strong><\/a>.<\/p>\n Meta descriptions don\u2019t have a direct impact on rankings<\/strong><\/p>\n The first thing that needs to be clear is that the meta descriptions don\u2019t have a direct impact on rankings.<\/p>\n What you write in the meta description is not used during the ranking process by the algorithms. What is more important for rankings is page title optimization<\/strong><\/a>.<\/p>\n Meta descriptions have an indirect impact on SEO and rankings (so they still matter)<\/strong><\/p>\n Meta descriptions are still important because this is what users see in the search results and this is related to SEO in two ways.<\/p>\n First, a good meta description will encourage users to click and visit your website and this means more traffic.<\/p>\n Second, Google is using CTR (click through rate) as a way to find out what users are looking for a particular search query.<\/p>\n If users prefer to click on your entry in the SERPS (regardless of your ranking position), then this is an indication to Google that your page can satisfy the user intent<\/em> better than the rest, and this will eventually lead to higher rankings.<\/p>\n To take advantage of this for SEO purposes, you need to make sure that the content of your page is highly relevant to the meta description otherwise users will go back to the search results after visiting your page and this is not good.<\/p>\n This is known in the SEO industry as pogo sticking<\/em>.<\/p>\n You can follow the simple rules below to optimize your meta descriptions:<\/p>\n First, make sure that they are in the proper length. Don\u2019t make your descriptions too short or too long. Aim for 160-320 characters.<\/p>\n Second, make use of the Performance Report<\/em> that is available in the new version of Google Search Console<\/strong><\/a> and find out pages that have a low CTR.<\/p>\n Login to the new Google Search Console<\/p>\n Click OPEN REPORT to view the Performance Report.<\/p>\n Click on AVERAGE CTR and PAGES to view the average CTR of your pages. Click also on POSITION to view the average position of those pages in Google Search.<\/p>\n Sort the results by low CTRs and start analyzing the pages that have the lowest CTR but are in the first page of the search results.<\/p>\n Click on a particular page to view more details and then click on QUERIES.<\/p>\n What you see now is a report that shows for the particular page, the average CTR and position for each search query.<\/p>\n Find out which search queries have a low CTR and perform the same search in Google to see what description is shown in your snippet for the particular query.<\/p>\n Review your meta descriptions and make sure that they are highly relevant to the user query.<\/p>\n Important:<\/strong> You will probably notice that Google is not always using your custom meta description but sometimes it creates a dynamic description based on the content of the page.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Examine the extracted text and make any changes to it so that it becomes more relevant to the search queries.<\/p>\n In other words, when optimizing your meta descriptions, you don\u2019t only care on what you write in the meta description field, but you also need to review and optimize pieces of your content that are chosen by the Google algorithms as dynamic descriptions.<\/p>\n Here are the 10 most important guidelines for writing optimized meta descriptions.<\/p>\n As noted above, your meta descriptions should around 160 characters. Try to stay within this range and avoid making your meta descriptions too short or too long.<\/p>\n Each and every page or post of your website, including the homepage and category pages, should have a unique meta description.<\/p>\n Meta descriptions should be informative and interesting. Include all relevant information in your meta description to help users understand if the particular page is useful and relevant to what they are looking for.<\/p>\n Don\u2019t write descriptions that have no relation to the content on the page.<\/p>\n Some CMS automatically generate the description of a page based on what is written in the first 160 characters of the content. This is a bad practice because you may end up with meta descriptions that look like this, which are not search engine or user friendly.<\/p>\n I mentioned above that the descriptions don\u2019t have a direct impact on rankings but that does not mean that you should not use keywords in your description. On the contrary, keywords are highlighted by search engines and make your snippet more relevant to the search queries.<\/p>\n Approach the description of each page in a unique way and avoid writing generic descriptions that don\u2019t accurately describe the page content.<\/p>\n Your descriptions should invite<\/em> users to click and visit your website but don\u2019t overdo it. It\u2019s always a good practice to make a few searches and see what your competitors have in their meta description before writing your own.<\/p>\n You want your descriptions to stand out and not be the same as your competitors.<\/p>\n Users are always looking for up-to-date information so where applicable add when your page was last updated. This will make your snippet more relevant and interesting to click.<\/p>\n If you are selling products, then besides the product features, you can also include benefits of why users should buy from your store like free shipping, returns, money back guarantee, lifetime guarantee etc. Look at the nice example below coming from amazon.<\/p>\n Although the use of schemas does not change the contents of the meta description, it helps in improving the overall appearance of your snippet and makes it a candidate for appearing as a Google feature snippet<\/strong><\/a>.<\/p>\n Based on the above guidelines, let\u2019s review some Good and Bad examples of meta descriptions:<\/p>\n Example 1: Dynamic Meta description with last updated date<\/strong><\/p>\n Search Google for \u201cTop Search Engines<\/strong><\/a>\u201d<\/p>\n Notice how the meta description gives a direct answer to the search query and also how the last updated date is shown in the snippet.<\/p>\n The above is a dynamic description generated by the Google algorithms and it\u2019s not the same as the custom description provided on the meta description<\/em> tag.<\/p>\n![\"Meta](\"https:\/\/www.reliablesoft.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/02\/meta-description-html-tag.jpg\")
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Meta Descriptions and SEO<\/h2>\n
How to SEO optimize your meta descriptions<\/h3>\n
![\"Open](\"https:\/\/www.reliablesoft.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/02\/open-report-1024x148.png\")
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How to write good meta descriptions?<\/h2>\n
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![\"Google](\"https:\/\/www.reliablesoft.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/02\/google-featured-snippet.jpg\")
Meta description examples<\/h2>\n
Examples of a good meta descriptions<\/h3>\n
![\"Dynamic](\"https:\/\/www.reliablesoft.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/02\/dynamic-meta-description-example-1024x174.png\")
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![\"Example](\"https:\/\/www.reliablesoft.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/02\/meta-description-good-example.png\")
![\"Short](\"https:\/\/www.reliablesoft.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/02\/meta-description-examples.jpg\")
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![\"Automated](\"https:\/\/www.reliablesoft.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/02\/meta-description-automated-description.png\")
![\"Meta](\"https:\/\/www.reliablesoft.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/02\/meta-descriptions-bing.jpg\")
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