What is meta-description?
Ever thought about what is meta-description and why it is so important for your online business?
Can’t understand how meta-description works and need a simple explanation in a few words?
Read our What is meta-description Content Bite Blogpost and learn in less than 800 words all you need to know about what is meta-description, why it is important, and how it works!
(Bonus: Keep reading and find out 6 actionable meta-description tips that will help to get more organic traffic in 2022)
Meta-description definition in digital marketing
A meta-description (sometimes referred to as a “description tag”) is an HTML attribute used to describe the content of a webpage. In simple words, it’s the text box that appears below the title and URL of your page in the search engine results page.
In terms of search results, meta-description takes up the most space of your entry – optimally about two lines. It’s a great “asset” to attract potential buyers to your website by delivering a compelling message that provides a solution to them and incentivizes them to click.
How meta-description is displayed in Search Engine Page Results
A meta-description is an HTML tag, used to summarize the content of a web page, optimally in a compelling way.
How meta-description works
Let’s consider search results to be similar to a typical ad in a newspaper or magazine. To attract a potential customer to call a phone number or visit an address to buy a product in-store, traditional print advertising used headlines and taglines.
Your meta-title serves as your headline, and your meta-description serves as your tagline. Since a meta-description is essentially a micro-pitch for your website, it should be filled with captivating language that entices users to click on your result.
When crafting a meta-description, ensure that you check the following boxes:
- Keep it up to 155 characters
- Use active & actionable voice
- Include your focus keyword
- Ensure it matches user intent
- Leverage benefit-driven copy
- Craft based on keyword strategy
- Capitalize on SEO copywriting
A great meta-description example
Why meta-description is important
Since meta-descriptions are prominently featured in SERPs, they have the power to soar or bank your click-through rate. Crafting compelling meta-descriptions can increase the number of people who click on your organic search results, so boost the potential buyers visiting your site.
This means that by effectively designing a comprehensive keyword strategy and by implementing the specialized techniques of SEO copywriting to write optimized meta-descriptions, you’re actively working on attracting more potential customers to your site.
Best meta-description tips for 2022
These 6 actionable meta-description tips will help to significantly boost your traffic in 2022:
- Use targeted keywords based on a comprehensive keyword strategy
- Ensure keywords match users’ search intent and that they’re relevant
- Avoid having the same meta-description across different web pages
- Compel users to click, providing value and addressing their needs
- Perform an SEO audit to locate not optimized meta-descriptions
- Use power words and emotional voice to incentivize users to click
Find out if your website’s meta-descriptions are optimally crafted, and receive actionable, free guidance
FAQs about what is meta-description
Even though the most popular search engine machines don’t use them as a direct ranking factor for a website, meta-descriptions are a fundamental part of a webpage’s performance in driving quality traffic. The more a meta-description is optimized, leveraging a comprehensive keyword strategy and effective SEO copywriting techniques, the more customers will visit your website.
It can differ from one site to another. Google’s bots crawl a site at least once a week, but that doesn’t ensure that they will map all pages. Hence, some meta-descriptions may be overlooked in the most recent crawls. To update a new meta-description, it can be as fast as 30 minutes or take up 2-3 weeks. Therefore, a week would be a reasonable average.
An SEO audit is a detailed analysis of the elements that influence your website’s performance and ranking in organic search engine results. Because meta-descriptions are a vital factor in your click-through performance, hiring a skilled SEO Copywriting Agency will aid you in locating all of the meta-descriptions on your website that need to be optimized in order to soar the traffic.
