reading time, about 5 minutes
The meta description is one of the elements in the head section of a html document. These elements provide machine readable information about the document.
The meta description is simply one of these tags. In essence it provides a short description about the page.
Typically, the meta description is relatively short and consists of perhaps a sentence or two giving the human user of the search engine results page (SERP) a good idea of what the webpage contains. This, along with the Page Title, is what is seen on the results page, which is all the human user sees when deciding if this is the correct page. That is, if your page meets their search criteria.
An example of the description meta tag is shown below:
<head> <meta name="description" content="Your meta description describes your webpage and usually appears in the search engine results page."> </head>
The important part here is the text within the quotes for the content part of the tag. This text, all being well, will be shown on the search engine results page (SERP) for your page.
The first thing to understand, is that the meta description, can be as long as you want it to be. There is no defined maximum length. However, as I’m sure you have noticed, the search engines only display a small amount of text.
When attempting to optimise the amount of text that will be displayed, we run into a very similar problem to the one we had with the page title. The search engine algorithms like to provide the best description they can. If the meta description you supplied is too long, then don’t be surprised if it is shortened on the results page. It is easy to know if it has been shortened, you will typically see ellipses (…) at the end of the text.
Google will typically use about 160 characters for the description in the results page. But, on Bing, you could easily see 270 characters being shown. Yahoo will display even more characters for the description, 350 is common. Yandex uses the same text as Google, that is 160 characters.
As a bit of fun, the reason for the different lengths probably comes from the December 2017 change Google made to the length of the text displayed on the results page. However, in May 2018, they changed it back to 160 characters. As always SEO is about making the content align with your target visitors and making the system work for them.
This means, that your ideal length for the description is going to depend on which search engine your visitors will primarily be coming from.
If you don’t know the answer, then the best option is to create the long description that will work ideally for Yahoo and make sure that all the most important information is at the beginning so that it shows ideally on the Google results page.
Think of it as an opportunity to get a good result with Google and to expand to fuller descriptions on the other search engines.
The main reason that you want your meta descriptions to be good, is because you want them to work. You want to bring visitors to your website from the search engine results page. This means, that they will affect your Click Through Rate (CTR). Even though they do not directly affect your ranking, they do affect who and how many people read them come to your website.
Make the description read naturally to the human user. This is your chance to get the click to your webpage. It should be written in the active voice and do not keyword stuff the description. If you do, the description will be changed or omitted. Feel free to use your target keywords or phrase and the description absolutely must reflect the content of the page.
In short, No, the meta description is no longer used as a ranking factor and hasn’t been for over a decade. This was because too many websites were abusing the system trying to gain an advantage, to the point where it became useless.
But a human visiting the search engine will see your description of the page and if that seems to be answering the search criteria they had, then your page will be clicked through to. So, it will directly affect your Click Through Rate (CTR) and ultimately your Conversion Rate (CR).
By now you’re probably wondering if it is worth the time and effort to write a good meta description and if you do, how should you go about it.
Work through the rest of this section and see how we recommend you do it for the optimum results.
The description is a vital part of your page. You have already spent time researching your keywords or phrases. You have spent time planning the page and know what content to write. How it will appeal to your target market? You have used the words and phrases they expect, and your page is now done. Why would you not extend that effort to the meta description? It is, after all, a part of the page and perhaps it is the main advert to the page.
When someone is browsing at a search engine, there’s only three things that can entice them to your webpage or website. The brand name of the company or organization hosting the content. The page title and the meta description.
Unless your brand is very well known, then you really only have two. Make them both compelling.
As always, use your brand voice, tone and phrases. This is part of branding the meta description to your other content. Try to include a call to action, something to enhance the need to click through to your webpage.
Keep the most important part of the description at the beginning. You never know when it might be cut short.
If you’re making the webpages by hand, make sure that you only have one meta description as having more than one, not only looks sloppy, but which one should be used? How can the search engine use your description if there are several, which is the correct one? In this case, they are just as likely to use nothing.
Simply, as with other meta tags, make them unique. You wouldn’t have a page title duplicated, just because the human user doesn’t see the text, the machine user does.
There’s no guarantee that a search engine will use your description. This is the same problem with other tags, such as the page title, if the algorithm doesn’t like your description for some reason, they might rewrite it.
There is no rule to say that they will or will not rewrite the description. Your best approach is to write very good content with a well-planned description for the search engine results page and that way, you are in control.
Obviously, it is a good idea to check with the search engines from time to time to ensure they are showing your description.
Don’t forget, that if the keywords or phrase that the user enters into the search box is in your description, then those words will appear in bold in the final text on the search engine results page (SERP). This makes it easier for the human user of the search engine to find the words they were looking for in your description. This will encourage them to read your full meta description and ultimately click through to your webpage.