The Importance of Writing a Good Meta Description

For those not in the know, the meta description for your webpage is the small piece of text that forms the bulk of your search result in search engines. It tells people what your site is about. This is crucial as otherwise they will have very little information to go on – particularly if they have never heard of your company before or are unfamiliar with you. So, a cupcake company might have a meta description along the lines of ‘We are the premier cupcake bakers in London. With over 10 years experience, we have more than 5000 satisfied customers.’

This will often be the first thing that people read about your website, so it needs to be catchy, concise and enticing. You want people to be intrigued by whatever it says and be persuaded to click onto your website. There are a few things you can do to maximise the impact of your meta description. For instance, think about it as you would an online ad. What would you write there if it was an ad for Adwords? What keywords would you include? Putting keywords there might not boost your search engine ranking, but they might strike a chord with the people reading what you have written and persuade them that yours is the site for them.

Also keep your description brief: any more than 150 characters and you run the risk of your message being cut off. Think carefully about your core message and make sure it is condensed down into your meta description. Another tip is to write a different meta description for each page of your website so the content will always be relevant.

Google admits that site useage data is now a small element of its ranking algorithm and many belive this will increase in importance as its much harder to manipulate, unlike content and links. This evaluation of site useage will likely include clickthrough rate (CTR) from search results. Google Webmaster Tools now shows CTR in its dashboard. This makes the meta description even more important and directly relevant to achieving higher rankings. it might have fallen out of favour somewhat, but meta data is just as important as the rest of your SEO.