A Comprehensive Guide On How To Design Effective Meta Description

Meta Description is not an unheard term in the world of online optimization and marketing. However, there would be hardly any marketing expert at a global scale who knows the complete in-and-out of it. 

Some may call it a summary of the content, while some call it the intent of the web page. Well, they are not wrong. But in order to witness the holistic optimization of your website, you have to understand meta description from scratch. 

So, let’s proceed forward and learn everything about META DESCRIPTION!

What is a Meta Description? Why Do We Need It?

Meta Description in SEO are HTML attributes that provide you brief information about the website. It will always appear in the snippets of the search engine’s search results. 

Although these “Tags” are not that important to gain search engine rankings, they help in getting CTR.

A few meta-description examples are as follows:

Now, why do we need it? 

SEO descriptions help search engines in tracing the keywords that are similar or exact matches to the query so that the results provided to the users are accurate.

It’s also important to avoid users being misled by websites that are not useful for them. The SEO descriptions will help you understand and get an idea about the website. 

What Are the Significant Meta Description Tags for Your Website’s SEO? 

In order to elevate the SEO metrics of your website, there are 7 significant meta tags that you must focus on. 

These are:

1. Title tag
2. Canonical tag 
3. SEO description
4. Robots meta tag
5. Alt. text tag
6. Responsive design meta tag 
7. Social media meta tag

7 Best Hacks to Write a Perfect SEO Description or How to Write Meta Descriptions? 

So, how do you write meta descriptions? Let’s find out.

To write an inch-perfect meta tag description, you can adhere to these seven best-proven techniques trending in the digital market. 

Constrict Up to 105 Characters 

Try to restrict the meta description length up to 105 characters. Although there is no limit to writing a meta description tag, Google will give the snippets based on the amount of space available. Thus, it is strongly recommended to keep the meta description length up to 105 characters or 680 pixels. So, don’t forget to check the meta description length before approving it. 

Here, the SEO IQ feature of RankWatch can help you to foster a substantial meta tag with precise meta description length.

It gives you relevant insights, including competitive keywords in meta descriptions, top keywords in meta tags, and exact keywords in meta titles and descriptions to obtain better SERP visibility. So, don’t fail to use the SEO IQ feature of RankWatch to construct a better meta description. You can also check out the other meta description example on Google to get a rough idea of its length and size. 

Incorporate Targeted Keywords

The target keyword must be present in the meta description without failure. Although it doesn’t directly affect SEO, the close proximity to the search terms would gain you some additional clicks for the users. 

The free keyword research tool of RankWatch can help you with this. You can use this feature to find the targeted keywords with optimum search volume and minimum competition.

Go to the free keyword research tool, feed the respective keyword in the given column, and click on the explore option. 

Instantly, you will get insights like CPC, competition, search volume, keyword difficulty, geographical distribution, organic keyword suggestion, paid keyword suggestion, question-based keywords, keyword grouping, and a lot more. 

Use all these impactful insights to fetch the right keyword for your SEO meta description. 

Fulfil User’s Need

Try to give information about what the users are actually looking for or what the content is all about. 

For instance, if you have written the content “Best IT companies in US,” the targeted keywords will be IT companies, best IT companies, IT companies in US, and so on. It should be short, crisp, and promising to users. They should get the essence of the information that they are actually looking for. This will make the visitors feel that the blog is worthy to be read.

Include CTA

Call-to-action not only makes the content viable but also influences the visitors to purchase the respective products and services. Thus, when it comes to improving the conversion rate, an SEO meta description equipped with CTA plays a great role in it. 

Sustain Uniqueness

A uniquely written meta exactly tells the users about the intent of the content. It informs the visitors about your product and thus compels them to buy it. So, a unique meta tag description can gain you a good volume of CTR from search engines. 

Aligned With Strategy

Meta in SEO is one of the ways to market your products and services along with providing information to the user. You need to tell why people need to visit your website. The Meta descriptions should be used as a marketing message and ensure that the user benefits by visiting your site.

Refrain Keyword Stuffing 

Excessing anything is bad! Suppose you have a dog grooming business, and in your meta tags, you put, we have amazing dog grooming products, check out the amazing dog grooming products and a couple of other same stuff. Do you think as a user, you would give it another look?

Don’t overdo it with your keywords. We know that keywords are important to make your website easily traceable by the searchers. One should remember that by stuffing the keywords, you will only deceive the searchers. Spamming the metas by keyword stuffing will do no good to your website.

Some “DON’Ts” of SEO Meta Description

After knowing the hacks of writing meta descriptions, there are a few practices that you should stay away from. 

Let’s find them out. 

Don’t Exceed Pixel Limit

You don’t want to look incomplete! Always remembering incomplete information does more harm.

Suppose you have an amazing meta tag, but on the SERPs, it’s only displaying what product or service you are offering and not showing what benefits your product or service can do to the user, it might lead the user to go on to some other site.

Don’t Deceive Users

They are smarter than you think! You play with them once, and they are never coming to your website again. So, write authentic content which is actually related to your site. Invoke curiosity, but always take the right path.

Don’t Duplicate Meta Content

Keep different Meta contents for different pages. Reading the same thing again and again is the last thing that the user wants.

Further, to find duplicate meta tags, you must use the site audit feature of RankWatch. Just log in to RankWatch or take a 14-day free subscription. 

Set the project with your domain address and click on the site audit section. Here, you get multiple website issues, including the duplicity in meta content that is technically an anti-SEO parasite for your website. 

Don’t Use Quotation

If you are not a programmer, this thing is not for you. 

The saying- “Something is better than nothing” doesn’t work here. So avoid quotations if you are not tech-savvy. 

The reason not to use quotation marks in the description is that Google will automatically truncate it. If it’s really important to put something in quotations, it’s better to use single quotes rather than double.

Conclusion

In the end, it has been concluded that Meta description tag is a strong factor in On-page optimization as it improves overall rankings of SEO. We should not neglect Meta tags as it is the only medium that can link the search query with the user. It is the only connection between the search result and the visitor.