How to write an effective meta de­scrip­tion

A meta de­scrip­tion is a short text that sum­ma­rizes the content of a webpage. By having short summaries of webpages, we­bcrawlers and internet users are able to better navigate online content. A good meta de­scrip­tion should be unique and ideally follow a formula, such as the AIDA model. SERP Snippet Generator, Screaming Frog und Mar­ket­ing­Trac­er are all great tools that can help you optimize your meta de­scrip­tion for search engines and website visitors alike.

Why are meta de­scrip­tions important?

If you set up a website, sooner or later you will come across the term search engine op­ti­miza­tion, or SEO for short. An important part of SEO is metadata, which includes title tags and meta de­scrip­tions. These often serve as the first point of contact between a website and its potential visitors. As such, it’s important to craft them well, because they can have an impact on the long-term success of your website.

What is the purpose of a meta de­scrip­tion?

A meta de­scrip­tion is a meta tag that is displayed to users in the search results of search engines, like Google and Bing. The purpose of a meta de­scrip­tion is to pique people’s interest by providing insight into what users can expect to find on a webpage. The quality of a meta de­scrip­tion can strongly influence whether users decide to ul­ti­mate­ly visit your webpage or not. Ideally, it should encourage people to visit a page and generate as many clicks as possible.

5 tips for writing effective meta de­scrip­tions

Use the AIDA model

The first tip for writing an effective meta de­scrip­tion is to follow the AIDA formula, which has four steps: attention, interest, desire and action.

Attention

First, you need to attract the attention of users by including some sort of eye-catching element in the text. These can be keywords or symbols such as check­marks.

Interest

Next, you need to generate interest. For this, try to choose words and phrases that are positive and highlight ad­van­tages.

Desire

After that, you want to cultivate desire for your website or a specific product. You can achieve this with a per­sua­sive ad­ver­tis­ing claim.

Action

Finally, the de­scrip­tion should encourage people to go to your website. At the end of your meta de­scrip­tion, add a call to action (CTA). These are phrases that prompt a specific action. For example, if your goal is to sell a product, your CTA could be “buy now”.

Be con­sis­tent with the in­for­ma­tion in the meta title and H1

The meta de­scrip­tion appears together with the meta title in search results. As such, they should com­ple­ment each other. Likewise, the H1 heading should reflect the in­for­ma­tion in the meta title and meta de­scrip­tion, as it is usually the first thing that users read when accessing your website. Although the wording should exhibit thematic con­sis­ten­cy, it’s important to avoid identical wording.

Tailor your message to your target audience

When writing your meta de­scrip­tion, you should also be aware of your target audience. Use a style of writing that your potential readers or customers will easily un­der­stand and relate to. It is also helpful to keep the search intent of said users in mind and state the intent briefly in the de­scrip­tion.

Pay attention to the length of the meta de­scrip­tion

It’s important to pay close attention to the length of your meta de­scrip­tion. You should aim for a total of 150 char­ac­ters (including the empty spaces between the char­ac­ters). This length, however, is not set in stone, because Google actually measures the pixel width, not the char­ac­ters them­selves. The maximum de­scrip­tion length is 900 pixels for desktop computers and 1,300 pixels for mobile devices.

If the de­scrip­tion exceeds this amount, Google will shorten it by replacing the remaining text with three dots. This is why it’s important to put essential in­for­ma­tion and keywords at the beginning of the de­scrip­tion. At the same time, the in­for­ma­tion that is placed in the space provided should be relevant to the user. Sistrix ’s SERP snippet generator is a great way to check the length of a meta de­scrip­tion and adjust it ac­cord­ing­ly.

Meta de­scrip­tions should be unique

Meta de­scrip­tions should be a unique piece of content. This means writing an in­di­vid­ual de­scrip­tion text for each page of your website. It’s important not to write the same thing twice, because duplicate content can have a negative effect on search engine rankings.

Your main concern when writing your de­scrip­tion, however, should be the user. At the end of the day, a unique and accurate meta de­scrip­tion can convince potential website visitors that the answer to their query is contained within your webpage. If there are multiple pages with identical meta de­scrip­tions, users might become frus­trat­ed and leave the website quickly. This can, in turn, have a negative effect on your SERP rankings.

There’s no need to worry if you can’t keep up with writing meta de­scrip­tions for your website. Search engines can au­to­mat­i­cal­ly insert a relevant excerpt of a webpage until you are able to create your own. Whether this is ben­e­fi­cial is something that needs to be de­ter­mined on a case-by-case basis. Generally speaking, it’s always better to formulate your own de­scrip­tions.

What are some helpful tools for writing meta de­scrip­tions?

Get a preview of your metadata with Sistrix’s SERP snippet generator

The SERP Snippet Generator from Sistrix is a helpful tool for checking the length of metadata and seeing how it will appear on a search results page. Simply insert your title and de­scrip­tion in the cor­re­spond­ing fields on the webpage and you’ll be able to see what the desktop and mobile snippets look like. Op­ti­miz­ing websites for mobile devices, also known as mobile SEO, is an important factor for SERP rankings.

Identify duplicate content with Screaming Frog

Screaming Frog’s SEO spider tool is a website crawler that can help you improve on-page SEO and check if your webpages contain duplicate content. Once their SEO spider is done crawling your website, any duplicate content will be listed under the tab Content. For in­for­ma­tion per­tain­ing to duplicate meta de­scrip­tions, or de­scrip­tions that are otherwise sub­op­ti­mal, consult the tab labelled meta de­scrip­tions.

To learn more about how to use Screaming Frog to check for duplicate content, you can read through the tutorial on their website.

Find webpages that are missing meta de­scrip­tions with Mar­ket­ing­Trac­er’s SEO audit tool

Mar­ket­ing­Trac­er offers many tools to help you optimize SEO content. One of them is the SEO audit tool, which iden­ti­fies pages on your website that don’t have a meta de­scrip­tion. The online marketing platform also clearly lists other errors and flaws so you can con­tin­u­ous­ly work on improving your website.

Summary

If you have a website, we recommend creating a meta de­scrip­tion for each in­di­vid­ual webpage. By doing so, you can inform potential visitors to your website of the content that awaits them. With accurate and well-written de­scrip­tions, you can increase the number of clicks you get and po­ten­tial­ly win over new customers.