This article was rewritten on January 20, 2025.
Sometimes the smallest optimizations can have a huge impact. Take meta descriptions for example.
Having a custom meta description, or putting keywords into it, is not a direct ranking factor for Google search. But a meta description can do many awesome things that influence ranking in other ways:
- Provide context to your title, so the reader knows exactly what to expect and is more likely to stay on your site
- Include phrasing that matches the reader’s query, making them more likely to click
- Showcase a bit of your brand personality through voice and tone
- Lend credibility to your site by looking more professional than other results
- Make your content sound more enticing than the competition, stealing clicks from higher results
That’s why it’s so important to make sure that every page, post, and other piece of crawlable content on your site has a properly configured meta description. We’ll explain all of this in more detail, including how to write a great meta description.
Post Contents
What is a Meta Description?
Meta descriptions are HTML attributes that provide concise summaries of your webpage(s) for users who discover your site in a list of search results.
Visually speaking, it’s the text that appears below the blue clickable links on the search results page (SERP).
Why are Meta Descriptions Important?
Think of meta description as advertising copy rather than just an optional text field. The purpose of a meta description is to thoughtfully sum up the page’s content, drawing in potential clients and customers from the SERP to your site. It is an important part of search marketing, and one of your most powerful opportunities to drive traffic.
Writing a compelling meta description that includes important keywords you want associated with your page can help you maximize click through rates and give you an edge over your competitors.
Is a meta description a Google ranking signal?
The direct answer is no. Google’s team has gone on record as far back as 2009 saying that neither meta descriptions or meta keywords factor into Google’s ranking algorithms for web search. That said, Bing, Yahoo, and other search engines have acknowledged using keywords in meta descriptions as ranking factors, which is why SEO tools like Yoast still recommend including them.
If it’s not a ranking factor, why do I need it?
If you care about everything else that happens beyond your placement in the search results, such as click-through rates and on-page engagement (as Google does), then you should also care about meta descriptions. That tiny piece of text below the page or post title is what helps searchers understand exactly how relevant your content is to the query, and makes them decide which site to click.
Your meta description is one of the few customizable options you have in relation to how your business appears on a search engine results page. It’s a low-effort, free way for you to attract visitors. Once the person lands on your site, if they have a great experience and don’t exit right back to the search results, that in turn tells Google that your content is relevant to that query and could potentially rank even higher if this behaviour happens repeatedly over time.
How to Add a Meta Description to Your Content
If you have a WordPress site, you’re in luck! There are lots of plugins that inject meta descriptions into your site’s code.
We like Yoast SEO. The free version gives you a place on each page or post to write meta descriptions, as well as insights on whether it’s too long or too short. You can also automate meta descriptions using a set of variables. This makes it really easy to bulk-add meta descriptions to high volume content like products or blog posts. The Premium version now includes AI content suggestions for titles and meta descriptions, although you can accomplish the same thing using a free AI writing tool.
If you don’t have a WordPress website, you can hire a developer to edit the HTML (or you can do this yourself) to add a meta description into the code after the title tag:
<head>
<meta name=”description” content=”This is an example of a meta description. This will often show up in search results.”>
</head>
You will need to do this for every page and post that needs a custom meta description.
How to Write a Meta Description
1. Make it compelling, concise and informative.
Creating a successful meta description is all about your audience. You need to know what they’re hoping to find, and what they need to read in order to be convinced that you’re the right source.
Be sure to write enticing copy that promises them a clear benefit from clicking. Don’t be afraid to include a call-to-action! But while you want to make your page sound as appealing as possible, don’t deceive searchers. It will be immediately obvious when they click to your site whether your meta description’s promise pays off or not, and if it doesn’t, the user will immediately exit. This ‘pogo-sticking’ will bring down your engagement rate and sends Google a message that your site didn’t fulfill the query and should be ranked lower. Don’t do it!
Don’t be afraid to include a call-to-action!
2. Keep it short, but not too short.
Meta descriptions typically get cut off at 155-160 characters. If you write more than 160 characters, your text will definitely get cut off on most devices. Keep in mind that mobile devices truncate the text at even fewer characters.
Using a WordPress plugin like Yoast will let you preview your meta description to make sure it doesn’t truncate mid-sentence. However, you don’t want to make it too short either! You should be aiming to use all the real estate you have, within a range of 140-160 characters.
3. Use keywords.
Although keywords in a meta description aren’t critical for your page’s ranking, Google and some of the other big search engines bold keywords in the description when they match a searcher’s query. Seeing the phrase that they searched in this text can make a searcher believe that your content is the right choice. It’s a good practice to use keywords when possible, as long as they fit naturally. These might be short- or long-tail keywords, whatever works best.
4. But avoid keyword stuffing.
Don’t go overboard on keywords anywhere you use them, especially in this short space! It will look like spam, and today’s searchers will automatically tune your site ouut. It won’t get clicked, and your meta description won’t serve its purpose.
Using the same meta description on different pages might save time for high-volume content, but it can appear to search engines as though those pages contain the same content, even if they have unique titles and unique copy on the actual pages. Make sure to change at least some part of the meta description for each post or page. Plugins like Yoast can help you automate a single meta description template for all content within a post type, and apply unique text wherever you insert a variable.
Test, monitor & adapt.
Just as you wouldn’t want to run the same ad for years on end, you don’t want to just write a meta description and then forget about it. In organic search, it is one of the first impressions you make on a user. Regularly check up on your meta descriptions as part of your content audits, if not for all pages and posts, at least for your most critical pages. Try new variations, keeping in mind that it can take weeks for Google to update your meta description.
And there you have it: our tips on how to write and create an exceptional meta description for SEO. We hope this helps you improve your search traffic!
