Why do people create websites? The reasons may be different but one thing is clear – the process of building and promoting a site takes time and effort.
So, you launched your first blog or website. You decided what topic it would be devoted to, decided on the design, and started filling it. Now is the time to correctly form the meta description tags. What are they and how to use them?
What are Meta Description Tags?The meta description tag is intended to create a short description of the HTML page. Its content can be used by search engines to form a snippet. This tag doesn’t affect the appearance of the page as it is service information.
The Importance of Meta Description Tags for SEOYou can use meta description tags to control the site’s position in search engines. Moreover, site users can see the page description. This snippet describing the page content helps users decide whether they want to visit the site or not. Therefore, this is one of the main points of competent SEO optimization of the site despite the fact that the abundance of keywords doesn’t play a direct role here.
How to Write Meta Description TagsGoogle and other search services offer many recommendations on the correctness of filling in the meta description. To summarize the general information, we can single out several mandatory rules that must be followed when filling out the meta description of the page:
1. Original descriptions. Try to create a variety of unique descriptions for different pages of the site without using templates. Alternatively, develop an original description on the main pages.
2. The maximum allowed length for a Meta tag. Traditionally, the length of the meta description can’t be more than 100-140 characters. Opinions about the acceptable upper limit of the size of the meta description tag differ: some experts are sure that it varies from 120 to 250 characters, others believe that the tag can’t be more than 160 characters. Please note that many users have a poor understanding of text content that is longer than 120-140 characters.
3. Content of the tag. It is important that the meta description matches the language of the page, is succinct, concise, but informative enough. Your task is to concretely, briefly present the essence of the content of a particular page. It is recommended to write the most basic part of the description at the beginning of the description.
4. Accuracy. The meta tag shouldn’t correspond to the entire site but a specific page. Its task is to display its actual information.
5. The minimum allowed length for description. It is important that the meta description consists of at least a few phrases and is not too short.
6. User-friendly Meta description. This tag should be clear and simple. It is not recommended to use too intrusively key phrases, exclamation marks, additional symbols, advertising slogans, or capital letters.
7. Selecting the meta name description form. You can write a tag in the form of listing characteristics that are valuable to users, as well as in the form of one or several sentences.
8. It is desirable to describe the benefits of a product, service, or company.
9. Don’t forget about dynamic elements in the description: the number of products, reviews, discounts, and prices (all this data can be constantly changing on the site)
10. Use emoji. Recently, it has become popular to use special characters and emoji in descriptions. Similarly, emoji can be used in titles. This use is believed to have an impact on search click-through rates by making the site snippet more attractive.