Posts

Code Header Description Title

Everything You Need to Know About Meta Descriptions

, , , , ,

The meta description is about a 160 character snippet, a tag in HTML, that summarizes page content. Search engines show the meta description in search results mostly when the searched for phrase is contained in the description. Optimizing the meta description is a very important aspect of on-page SEO.

The function of a meta description for your page is simple: its main purpose is to get the visitor from Google to click your link. In other words, meta descriptions are there to generate clickthroughs from search engines.

What is Metadata in HTML

Metadata is information about your HTML document that isn’t visible on a page, but is in the search results. Metadata usually specifies the page description; author of the asset; the date of publication or the date of the last update; keywords, etc. Metadata is supported by all the major browsers such as Google Chrome, Internet Explorer, Mozilla, Opera, and Safari.

Search engines don’t use metadata as a ranking factor in their algorithms and SEO experts discourage website owners from adding meta keywords to the HTML of a page. Why? Mainly because these meta keywords don’t help anyone with anything apart from showing your competitors what keywords you are trying to optimize your pages for. So better skip on meta keywords.

On the other hand, there are meta titles and meta descriptions which are still super important for any HTML document. In this piece of writing, we are going to explain how to write a meta description and what the benefits behind it are.

What is a Meta Description?

Meta descriptions display preview snippets for a specific page, giving a clear idea of your site’s content straight from the search results and encouraging users to click-through to your site. This makes it a paramount part of search marketing. A meta description is a short HTML attribute of about 155 characters – including spaces – and displays under the title tag and link in the search results.

Description in META tag

“The description tag is one of the most important elements shown to the users for the typed query. The meta description is presented as a snippet of your content. It tells your potential visitors what kind of information they can find on your web page.”

Optimal Meta Description Length

“The meta description is used by Google to present your website’s content on a search engine results page. The amount of characters that could be displayed is limited, though. Shorten the description of your site and try not to exceed 160 bytes.”

Meta Description Code Example:

<head>

<meta name=”description” content= “When migrating your website, there is always a risk to lose your keyword rankings. Discover everything you need to do to avoid SEO migration disaster.”/>

</head>

Meta Description in Search Results:

Meta Descriptions in Search

WordPress Meta Description: (by Yoast SEO)

WordPress Yoast Meta Descriptions

Its function is to summarize the content of a particular page. The better written your meta description is, the more click-throughs it drives. Meta description optimization is a necessary part of on-page SEO.

The best examples of meta descriptions come from search engines themselves. Anytime you want to check how to create yours, look at Google, Bing or Yahoo.

Is a Meta Description a Ranking Factor?

A meta description tag isn’t a direct ranking factor; however, there is a strong correlation between higher rankings and a well-crafted meta description. That’s because this short paragraph provides a unique chance to advertise your content to the searchers and convince them to read further.

A compelling meta description makes people click-through from SERPs, positively impacting your click-through rate. CTR already belongs to the list of behavioral factors that have a strong influence on search rankings.

Meta Description Length

Your meta descriptions should accurately convey and wrap up what your page is about within one or two sentences.

Search engines have limited space and aren’t capable of displaying long meta descriptions on SERPs. So the character limit of a meta description is 155 characters. – This is what can be fully displayed without any cut offs. Longer descriptions will end up being cut in the middle of what you wanted to say. So make them engaging but concise.

Search engines can also add some extra snippets to your results, making your meta description even shorter. So don’t go for the maximum meta description length, find your optimum instead. For instance, we usually stick to 150 characters.

Incorporate CTA

Your meta description should work for you. As the name itself suggests, it should be descriptive and written in a way that encourages clicks. The second part of your meta description should promise to benefit readers in some way and make them click in order to find out more. At the end of your description write “Find out more” / “Learn more” / “Discover more” or any other incentive to boost clicks.

Keywords in Meta Descriptions

Even if search engines declare that meta descriptions don’t improve your ranking (meaning, incorporating keywords is not a must), write them anyway.

As you can see on the screen below, when you type in a particular phrase into a search box in Google, like for instance – meta description – you are provided with a list of results with all the keywords appearing in bold. This also refers to keywords in meta descriptions.

Meta Descriptions Example

So including keywords in this short HTML snippet will at least draw more attention to your page when a user searches for a particular phrase. And this is a substantial advantage.

Use Rich Snippets to Enrich Your Meta Description

Structured data is a very useful element to add to your metadata. Depending on the type of content that you publish, factors such as ratings, price, and date of publication can determine whether a user clicks on your resource or not.

So always leverage rich snippets to make your meta description even better and more detailed for searchers. Add structured data to your results using WordPress plugin – schema.org – or if you aren’t using WordPress, you can use Google markup helper to help guide you through the process of adding rich snippets to your pages by adding the missing tags.

Uniqueness is Key

Make sure that all your meta description tags are unique on each page, as the repetitive ones can cause you some serious duplicate content issues. You can check the uniqueness of your meta descriptions using Google Search Console. Go to → Search Appearance → HTML Improvements → Duplicate meta descriptions. There you will be provided with the full report.

How to fix duplicate meta descriptions?

It’s best to rewrite them or entirely get rid of them. In the short movie above, Matt Cutts explains that it’s better not to have any meta descriptions rather than have duplicate meta descriptions across pages.

If no meta description has been specified, search engines will display an excerpt from the page instead. Search engines can auto-create a meta description by choosing the most relevant part of your text on a page. Matt Cutts suggests that in some cases, it can be the best solution, especially when you aim to avoid duplicate content.

Where to start if you have a big website?

Check out your best-performing assets in Google Analytics regarding sessions and the trial conversions they generate. To do so, go to Behaviour → Landing Pages and add the proper Goal.

Then, click on the sessions column to organize your data, and note the best volume pages down. Afterward, go to the goal column and organize the results in a similar manner, and once again, jot down the best pages.

This research should give you a clear overview of which meta descriptions to optimize first. The correct optimization of metadata should boost their performance.

However, independently from the research, start with your homepage.

Homepage Meta Description

The homepage meta description is a very particular case. This is your most valuable resource, so an excellent approach is imperative. Craft and optimize a meta description for your homepage first, remembering to incorporate your primary strategic keywords. Try to wrap it around a compelling marketing message that emphasizes your unique selling points.

Your homepage will usually show up in the search results along with site links underneath. Site links highlight other relevant pages that are deeper in your domain and are meant to help searchers navigate your website, as they enable to jump directly to a page of interest.

One-line site links, as well as two columns site links, are generated automatically by search engines, and the decision of what to display is based on the relevancy: what results can potentially be the most useful to a particular searcher.

You can’t decide on your end what will be displayed, but you can make sure that your results have great meta titles and meta descriptions.

So once your homepage meta description is done and well-crafted, the next priority is optimizing the metadata of pages that appear below.

Homepage meta description from Google

Once you are done, you can go back to the results of your research. Remember to follow all the rules included in this piece of writing! Finally, use the TurkReno On-Page Optimization tool to see if your meta description for a particular URL is correct. Go ahead, check them all!

Happy optimizing!

/by

Site is still down; Blog re-design launched

,

Well, I’ve taken down the main site for a few reasons. For one, Yahoo wasn’t caching it at all because it was in Flash. I know that it’s really not that important to me, but it is to other people when trying to explain things and then come back to them a year later to readdress them like I said I would.

It’s important to note that the holder page that I made for the site is still using Google Analytics. Also, here’s a lesson to show that search engines WILL pick up single characters and put them into their search results as a page title. For the most part, the instances that would happen in when a new search engine comes around, like Cuil, it may or may not think of that page as a directory page.

Who knows. I’m just rambling now, so I’m going to go finish my page.

/by
Mobile, Alabama Website Design Services

Is Your Web Site Really Too Dead To Manage

As a web designer, I constantly am presented with both good and bad ideas.  Some ideas like hummingbird feeders, dog tags, and wholesale sales on the surface may seem like good ideas, but ultimately stay at ZERO unique visits (Most with an average of 5-7 unique visits a week).  In Google Analytics, unique visits are defined as “Direct Traffic”.  These sites are sites that I would consider dead sites.  So, how do you bring a dead site to life?

There are a few different to consider in bringing a dead site to life.

  1. Do you have an hour a day that you can use to commit to seeing a site flourish?
  2. Are you willing to change your content regularly?
  3. Have you asked other people what they think about your site?
  4. Do you have a sitemap submitted to Google Webmaster Tools?
  5. Are you going to take a free or paid approach at marketing?

These are 5 simple things to ask yourself.  Here’s what I have to say about the list:

For #1, “Do you have an hour a day that you can use to commit to seeing a site flourish”, is basically a matter of self-discipline.  I’ve had a few clients see what they could actually do, but get discouraged by a decrease in their analytics numbers.  Speaking more directly, this client also tried to ask me to become the CEO of his company and manage all of the business.  I just reminded him of the contract that I made him sign (and you should be making people sign contracts, too) and told him what it would cost to have me do what they were too lazy to do.  Laziness only begets more laziness when doing any sort of SEO or development.

#2, “Are you willing to change your content regularly”: This can be as difficult as you make it to be.  Some search engines look at the file timestamp that you can see within your FTP browser or webroot on your server. Changing this can be as easy as changing a single character within a page if you haven’t updated it in a very long time.  SE’s set priority of information on newer pages, so updating them, or just doing a simple edit, can make all the difference.  Another alternative is re-designing your site using something like WordPress or Joomla to use a CMS (Content Management System) as your editor.  This can be a great way to use new technology such as a Blog or an RSS feed to distribute your information.

#3, “Have you asked other people what they think about your site”. This can do one of two things: 1.  Help drive traffic vicariously by producing talk.  2. Help you realize that your site does in fact suck and give you a reason to: A. continue, or B. quit.  Other people can be a very interesting wild card if you keep an open mind.  A simple misplacement of an image, or a bad image, that you can correct can improve things like the time visitors are on your site.  Most people are going to give you an opinion of the aesthetic value of your site.  If you can find people who will do that and give you opinions on the code you’re writing (if you write the code and not use a CMS), then you have found a valuable person to ask questions to. Very Important: Do not abuse this person’s opinion if you value your friendship.  It can be extremely annoying to be asked the same question over and over, especially when the opinion being rendered is a free one.

#4, “Do you have a sitemap submitted to Google Webmaster Tools”.  This is remedied if you answered no by two links: GSiteCrawler and Google Webmaster Tools.  GSiteCrawler generates an XML and simple text-based file structure of your site into a file.  It can also automate this process, too.  The advantage of having a sitemap is allowing search engines to know where they can go if there is no solid entry point to pages buried deep within your site.

#5, “Are you going to take a free or paid approach at marketing”:  I get asked this a lot.  For the paid approach, you could use something like Google AdWords or ExactSeek to drive traffic.  The truthful reality of using services such as this is there is no guarantee that you will have someone actually stay on your site when they do get there.  Plan your money effectively.  I’ll come back one day and re-address what effective paid marketing is and isn’t, so for now only pay for advertisement if it’s been effective in the past and use the free methods.  So how do you take the free approach?  Simple. The UseNet and free press release services.  Generally, you want to actually have an LLC or actual articles of incorporation as a business if you’re going to use something like the press releases because reputable companies are there and those who are not appearing to be a reputable company will just get removed as spam.  The UseNet, however, is filled with all kinds of information, spam, files, and people that aren’t prudish about letting a lot fly.  Just don’t try to pull a bogus marketing scheme and no one will try to hunt you down.  Either way, a good submission will travel for weeks across the Internet and create dozens of referring links back to your site.

I can’t really say if you answered yes or no to all of these questions if you should or shouldn’t continue with your site.  But, I can say that it should be clear at this point.  If you are not willing to commit the time that it takes to make a site its best, then it isn’t possible for you to treat your Internet customers or visitors in a way that they will have no problem handing you money.  And that’s the bottom line.

/by