SEO Step By Step Guide–22. Meta Descriptions

The next in the list is Meta Descriptions. There has always been an ongoing debate whether your meta descriptions will have any effect on your search rankings.

If you are targeting Google, then the answer is, “No!” Hearing from the horse’s own mouth, “it’s worth noting that while accurate meta descriptions can improve click through, they won’t affect your ranking within search results.” Yes, that is what Google says about meta descriptions. If meta descriptions are not going to help you in getting better results in Google then should we still waste time in adding meta descriptions? The answer is “Yes!”

As pointed out by Google, when you have good meta descriptions, you will be able to improve your click through rate. There is no use in getting listed in top 10 positions of Google’s search results page, people should click on your link and visit your website. Therefore, you must pay attention to your meta descriptions. They should be written in a captivating and concise manner describing the content of the page so that visitors will be prompted to visit your website. Google does not encourage boilerplate meta descriptions for all the pages. Each page should have unique meta description.

When you are writing your meta descriptions you must use site level descriptions for home pages and other general pages such as contact us page, FAQs page etc. For the other pages, you must come up with page level description. Make sure you proof read your meta descriptions because it is very easy to overlook errors on our meta descriptions but what you need to remember here is that your meta description will be creating the first impression about your service as this will be the first thing users get to see when they come via search engines. When you cannot project quality and professionalism in your meta description then you can be sure of losing a considerable amount of traffic to your website. Visitors are becoming increasingly perceptive these days. Therefore, you cannot afford to be lax about your meta description.

While Google does not seem to use meta descriptions for ranking purposes, there may be still other less capable search engines that may be using these meta descriptions for ranking purposes. Meta descriptions were originally meant to provide search engines with basic information about the website and about each page. Search engine algorithms were not as capable as they are today so they had to rely on the information provided by the webmasters about their websites for ranking purposes. This resulted in a massive abuse. Eventually search engines started improving their technology. However, not all search engines improved their search algorithms. So a number of search engines still likely to depend on meta descriptions for their ranking purposes.

When you are coming up with meta descriptions the ideal length suggested for the description is 150 characters.

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