Meta Description is a fragment of the HTML code whose function is to summarize what the page addresses. This summary appears only in the code and is not seen by the user browsing the website.
Therefore, after search tools stopped analyzing the meta description as one of the important elements to determine the ranking of websites for a certain keyword, many people stopped evaluating this item, ignoring it and not writing it correctly.
There are, however, some very important benefits to using the meta description. By neglecting it, your company may be missing out on many opportunities for clicks and visits.
The current role of the Meta Description
The meta description plays a very important role in two of the biggest sources of traffic for most websites: search tools and social networks.
search tools
In search tools, even those that don't count as a ranking factor, the content of the meta description appears on the results page as a summary immediately below the page title. Thus, a website that is in a worse position can still win the click in the case that its description is more attractive. Which of the two results below seems to catch your attention the most?
Another relevant item is that if the searched keyword appears throughout the description, it appears in bold, thus gaining greater prominence and increasing the chance of a click:
Observation: in the vast majority of cases, Google uses the meta description on the results page, but there is no obligation to do so. Occasionally the search engine itself chooses some other route on the page and displays it as a summary.
Social media
Some of the major networks, such as Facebook, Linkedin, and Google+, offer a snippet of the page highlighting the content a little better.
By default, what appears on those three networks is the meta description. Look at the examples below:
How to do
Quickly going through the implementation, the meta description is used with the following code:
<meta name=” description” content=” Here is the text-summary of your company“>.
However, if your company uses the WordPress platform, there are plug-ins such as All-in-one SEO that make editing easier for those who do not have technical knowledge.
In addition to talking about the application, some observations are also important to choose what will be written in the description:
Be reasonable in size
Google cuts the meta description to around 160 characters. The text needs to be smaller than that to appear correctly.
Very short descriptions do not usually work well, since they appear to be incomplete.
Search for something objective and interesting
Occasionally we see some vague descriptions, which do not say exactly what the visitor will find on the page.
Another mistake is not making an effort to create attractive text. Descriptions such as “This is a page about marketing” should not work well: you need to arouse curiosity or show that you solve a problem.
Also remember to use the important keywords of the page, since they will be in bold when they appear as a search result.
Use calls-to-action
It is always positive to clearly indicate to the visitor what your company wants them to do. “Click and read more” is an example of a call-to-action that applies to the situation.
Test
Even in the case that in Adwords the descriptive text is less (two lines of 35 characters), it is possible to test which are the most relevant points for visitors and, later, better elaborate those items in the meta description.
where to start
Ideally, all new pages should have their description once published. However, this does not usually happen and, in most cases, a retroactive work of reformulation of those texts in the pages that already exist on the website is necessary.
To find out where it's worth concentrating, our recommendation is to look at the most visited pages originating from the websites where meta description is important: Google, Facebook, Google Plus, and Linkedin.
This can be done in Analytics, analyzing the "content" tab and specifying "origin" as a secondary dimension:
Facebook Insights for websites, indicates the contents of the website with the most "Likes" on Facebook.
Another quite useful tool is Google Webmaster Tools. In the "traffic" tab, there are the "activities" in the "+1 dialing report". With this item, it is possible to see which pages were shared on Google Plus.
That same “traffic” tab also has the “search queries” option, which indicates how many times your website appeared in search results. Many appearances and few clicks can mean an opportunity for improvement in the meta description .
Regardless of the results of those searches, we recommend reviewing pages that are clearly important to your business: home, product pages, and blog home pages.
Are you already using meta descriptions on your site? Let us know in the comments.
