What Is SEO Description

If you just post pictures of your products and services, would people actually know the features of it, by just looking at the image? No! People want to know why they should buy your product, and not someone else’s, which is why you need to convince them and for that, writing a meta description for SEO is very important.

According to seoclarity.net, a meta description is mostly a 160 character snippet, which is considered a tag in HTML, that provides a summary to the user about a product, webpage, or a service. The reason why you need this meta description is because search engines show a description in search engine results, and this is your chance to grab the attention of the user.

You need to optimize a meta description, as it is a vital part of on-page SEO.

Purpose Of Meta Description

In simpler words, the main purpose of a meta description is to attract the attention of visitors from both search engines and social media, to visit your page. Meta description is like a mini ad for your webpage, which is why you need to put in extra thought when you are writing a meta description.

According to neilpatel.com, social networking websites use the meta description that you post. Websites like Facebook and LinkedIn post the first or the top two sentences of the description, which is why you need to make sure that you put valuable information in these two lines. If the first two lines of the meta description don’t do justice in describing your product and service, then it is more likely that you will get less clicks on them.

Meta description is a way through which you can sell your page, so make sure you get it right.

How To Write A Meta Description?

Before you write your meta description, consider a few things.

Make It Short

According to shopify.com, your meta description should not be more than 155 characters, and you have to get your best keywords in the description

Customer Focus

Who are you writing the meta description for? The customer! Thus, you need to know your target audience and the people who search for your products, so that you can use a language that would appeal to them. The description of a product on the search engine results page is there to make the life of a customer easy, because it saves their time and tells them right away what a page is about. So, when you are writing a description, make sure you keep this fact in mind.

Impression

First impressions matter; when you have found a message that you would like to convey to your customer, then make sure that the phrases and the words you choose, really conveys that message.

Call To Action

When you are writing a meta description, according to yoast.com, you should include a call to action for the user to feel encouraged to open your website. For example, you can use phrases like, “Find out more”, “check out our newest deals”, “click for a surprise” and “try it out! It’s free!”. These words will make the user want to find out more about your offer. Plus, you are giving them something to do when they have seen your link.

Match It With the Content

If your meta description doesn’t match with your content, then what good can it do? People will read the meta description, visit your website and will feel disappointed and betrayed because they didn’t get to see the content they were promised. This will be bad for your bounce rate, as it will increase and the conversion rate won’t increase, which is something that every company with an SEO campaign wants to increase.

Things To Avoid

There are some common mistakes that people make when they are writing a meta description. Some of these mistakes and the things that you should avoid are discussed below:

• According to moz.com, you should not stuff the description with keywords. If you use the same keyword nine times, then you will receive a penalty.
• Don’t just copy and paste content from the main page, but make a real effort to write the description.
• Don’t use the same description for every product, service or webpage, because that makes a search engine confused and it totally wastes your effort.

Google AdWords

Consider Google AdWords your competition, because it gets the top positions in the search engine results. According to weidert.com, you need to know your competition, to write a meta description that is better than them. Study your competitor’s meta description or those descriptions that are displayed on the top, and see how your descriptions compare with them. If you don’t compare and analyze, then you won’t know the things you are doing wrong and the thing you need to improve on.

Make sure that the meta description that you are writing, is welcoming and flawless. If any known people appear in your brand ads, then dropping their names in one or two meta descriptions can have a positive impact on the number of visitors your website receives.

Test And Monitor

Just because you think you have written a compelling meta description, doesn’t mean that it will work according to what you have predicted. This is why, you need to test and monitor the response rate of your meta description; this is the same case for all your SEO activities. If you don’t test or experiment, then you won’t know what works well for you.

Moreover, if one thing works for your competitor, like a keyword, then it doesn’t mean that the same thing works for you as well. Lastly, you need have good quality content, otherwise the impact that your meta description made, on the user, will go down the drain.

If you want to learn more about meta descriptions, the best way to write them and why you should write them, then you can watch this video. This is a tutorial for beginners, so it can be very helpful for you.