Getting More from Your Meta
Meta descriptions are one of those things that can be easily glossed over. They don’t have any bearing on the appearance of your page and their influence on your overall ranking could be called into question. But the fact is it does have an effect and it will help you draw in visitors.
You see, rather than simply adding to your keywords, a Meta description will also appear for that particular page within the search engine results pages.
Whenever you search for something on a search engine you’ll get a list of results. These are usually made up of a title and a short two line description. It is the short description that appears directly beneath the title that we are talking about. This is that page’s Meta description.
Essentially the Meta description is a gateway into your site. It gives the perspective visitor an insight into what the page has to offer. Therefore it is a fantastic opportunity for you to really sell your services.
If you don’t write a specific Meta description, the search engine will commonly just take the first 160 characters from your page’s body content. Whilst you would expect that this would be pretty decent, sometimes you have to have something a little more focussed, something written expressly for that purpose.
A proper Meta description can bring your site to life within the SERPs. It can show that you understand what the searcher is looking for and that your site is the best place for them to visit. Essentially it is another fantastic opportunity for you to create some short, punchy and engaging copy for your visitor’s benefit.
But of course there is another side. As this is an SEO blog, we couldn’t go too long without mentioning the positive effect that a Meta description - and all other forms of Meta for that matter - can have on your rankings.
It won’t be huge, that should be acknowledged from the outset, but it will contribute. Remember, this is yet another opportunity for you to feed the search engine crawlers more information about your site. Therefore you have to make the most of it; get those vital keywords in there, whilst producing a coherent and inviting description of the page in general.
For this reason you have to ensure that the Meta you use is unique. It’s no good simply copying and pasting it from page to page. It won’t have the same relevance or impact, plus it will count against you with regards to duplicate content. Yes it can be time consuming writing each and every one from scratch, but even if you just follow a template and change the major points, that would be better than nothing.
To really get more from your Meta, you have to put more into it. Those 160 characters can say a lot about what your site offers, don’t let that go to waste.
