The Importance of Meta Description
In the world of web development and SEO, there are lots of terms and acronyms. From CSS to SEO to Alt Text and more, building websites — and more importantly, a digital presence — requires understanding all of these details. One of the overlooked segments within our industry is the importance of a Meta Description. Let’s take a few moments to review why you cannot overlook this part of your marketing strategy.
What is a Meta Description?
When search engines display results to a user, they will include the page title and some kind of “summary” explaining what the page is about. This is your Meta Description: that blurb of text below your page title and URL.
You can set a Meta Description for each page on your site. However, if you choose not to, then often search engines will try to create their own summary, usually with less-than-desirable results.
Do they help SEO?
In a word, no. However, website dashboard tools such as WordPress’s Yoast SEO will often grade you on whether or not you use your designated keyword within your Meta Description.
But this raises the question:
if they don’t directly help SEO, why does it matter? The answer lies in the importance of a Meta Description to the user experience.
So what’s the importance of a Meta Description?
Pretend you are about to buy a car. You have two identical models, except one is blue and one red. Blue is your favorite color, so that’s the one you choose to buy.
The importance of Meta Descriptions is similar to this. If all things are equal between your site and another, a completed Meta Description can be the deciding factor between which page the user visits. In other words, it doesn’t help with SEO rankings, but it instead helps with the user experience and “sells” them on clicking on your content instead of the competition.
One final note on the importance of Meta Descriptions: recall earlier where we said search engines will auto-populate this data. If you fill it out in advance, when Google and other platforms index your site, they’ll display whatever you want it to say — essentially, optimizing your online presence one step further. If you let them decide what your Meta Description says to users, and then you update it, it will require a reindexing to show your updated details.
Tips to optimize your Meta Description
The importance of a Meta Description is not unique to your homepage. Each page on your site should have one, or at the bare minimum, any page that you are allowing to be indexed. In addition, this is your one chance to encourage a click-through to your site or a specific page. To that end, try implementing these four tips to optimize your Meta Description:
- Keep it at no more than 300 characters;
- Always include the page’s keyword or longtail keyword phrase;
- Don’t duplicate a page’s Meta Description onto another page;
- Be clear and concise, yet thorough, explaining why your page is the one they want to click on.
A complete digital marketing solution
One of the advantages of working with our team is that we are a complete digital marketing solution. We understand the importance of a Meta Description, yes, but we also thoroughly understand how SEO works, how to market your brand via social channels, and the detailed nuances of blogging. We act as your partner and extension of your brand to help you maximize your digital marketing efforts.
Would you like to learn more? Then call Brandtastic at 813-441-0275 or simply send us a quick note requesting a callback.