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Since the inception of SEO, meta descriptions have an important factor. However, Google has also mentioned that meta descriptions are not an important ranking factor now. But several studies have revealed the fact that as an indirect signal, descriptions still helps people to rank higher. An informative meta description will improve the click-through rate (CTR) of your website, which will boost its SEO ranking.

What Is a Meta Description?

A meta description is a meta tag that provides short description about the web page. You will find meta descriptions on the SERP underneath the meta title of the page.

Importance of Meta Descriptions

Meta description used to be an important ranking factor. But recently Google has said that they don’t take the description of a page as a ranking signal.

Recently Yoast has performed an in-depth study. In this study, they have found the following things:

• Google automatically creates many meta descriptions. Google does this based on the search term that users place on the search bar to perform a search.
• In 66% of cases, they have found that Google forms the meta description by taking sentences from the first paragraph of the web page. Google can also do this with your site. So when you are writing the introduction of your page, you have to keep meta description in mind.

If you think carefully, then you will understand that meta descriptions don’t just offer SEO value. In addition to that, it also offers plenty of other values. Check out here the few of them.

• A well-written meta description improves the CTR of the website.
• By improving the click through rate of the website, you will be able to drive traffic to your site.
• When you get more traffic to your website, it will boost your conversion rate.

SERP Snippets vs. Meta Descriptions

Many people think that “search snippet” and “meta description” are the same things. But they have to understand the fact that these are the two different things.

A meta description is an HTML tag that you can control. It means you can write your own meta descriptions. However, search snippets are the descriptions that Google shows on the search engine result page. Google takes data from the sites to create search snippets. So overall, it is to conclude that writing a search snippet is not in your hand. Google will create it according to their preference.

Meta Description Length

The ideal or recommended length of the meta description is 160-165 characters. Some people also limit the characters from 150 to 160. By optimising your meta description properly, you will be able to tell your users the subject of your webpage. It will also help you to reduce the bounce rate.

Last year Google announced that they were going to change the length of the character of the SERP snippets. A SERP snippet contains around 300 characters. It is almost double the recommended length of the meta description.

Moz performed a study to check the new limit of the meta descriptions. They wrote 300 character long meta descriptions. And suddenly after that, Google got back to its standard character limit.

So, here comes the question what does it mean for the SEO? Well, you have to make your own experiments for getting results. During the process, you will understand what is actually working for your website.

Research

If you want to improve the SEO ranking of your website, then you have to research a lot. It really does not matter from which industry you belong. If you want to improve your ranking, then you have to research a lot. In this section, we will talk about SERP researching.

During your SERP research, you have to figure out what your competitors are doing. Monitor their SERPs for a few days, and it will help you to create your own strategy. In the section below, we have discussed how you can conduct a SERP research step by step.

Step 1: At first, you have to research the SERPs for your keywords. Saying this thing is easier, but doing this can be an overwhelming job. During the research, you have to find out the kryptonite of your competitors. You might be thinking what’s the point of looking for competitors’ meta descriptions. Well, it will help you to understand what is working for them.

Step 2: In this stage of the researching process, you have to check the descriptions of your competitors carefully. And after that, you have to figure out what is actually working for them.

Step 3: This is the last stage of the research. Now, you have to create an excel sheet where you have to put the data of your competitors. After that, you have to track it on a monthly basis.

Research Your Clients

In this stage, you have to research your clients. So here comes the question of what you should do here. Here you have to identify the optimal buying journey of your target customers. And after that, you have to understand what happens to them at every stage of the marketing funnel.

It is essential to understand that the marketing funnel can be different based on your industry. So you have to customise the meta descriptions based on your findings.

Brand Voice

If you research carefully, then you will understand that every brand has a unique tone of voice. Just like that, you also have to create your own unique brand voice. And after that, you have to craft your descriptions so that it matches the tone of your brand voice.

Sometimes you might also have to change the tone of your descriptions based on its subject. Take the example of an eCommerce site that sells a wide range of products. Now they need to set different tones for luxury and regular products.

If they use the tone of hardware product page on premium bags page, then it won’t go right. So sometimes you might also have to adjust the tone of your meta descriptions for internal pages.

Keywords

Google has clearly mentioned that using keywords on the meta descriptions won’t help the webmasters to improve their ranking. But if you search for your target keyword, then you might find that almost all the sites have used keywords in the description.

So you might be thinking why your competitors are still using keywords on the meta descriptions. Well, you have to understand that placing keywords on the meta description is an effective technique for grabbing the attention of potential customers.

You have to maintain a level of sophistication while placing keywords in the meta description. You need to do this as naturally as possible. By doing this properly, you will be able to win half the battle, which will help you to get more clicks. As a result, you will be able to drive the maximum number of traffic on your website.

Trending Social Headlines

While writing the meta description, you have to make it trendy. So here comes the question, what you can do to make your descriptions trendy. Well, if you want to identify what is trending, then you have to log in to your social media account.

By checking a few posts, you will be able to identify the trending topics, phrases and words. You can use them to craft your meta description. It will help you to make your description trendy which will grab the attention of the target customers.

Be Specific

While writing the description, you have to be specific. So ensure that your description will inspire the confidence of your target customers. So don’t make them feel like that this is just a part of your sales funnels. Instead of that, you have to make them understand what’s the subject of the web page through your meta description.

Refresh

You can consider refreshing the meta description of your old pages. This is an excellent way that you can follow to get new visitors on your old pages. You can also re-share the post on social media sites and improve its visibility.

Balance

Not every format of meta description will work for your industry. So you have to research first to understand what kind of meta description will work for your web page. After that, you have to optimise your description accordingly.

While writing the meta description, you also have to create a balance of proper branding tone, call to actions, and information about the page. If you manage to maintain the balance, then you will be able to make your meta description stand out.