What is a meta description?
Meta descriptions are promises you make to searchers.
In search engines like Google and Bing, a SEO meta description appears underneath the title of your website. By describing your web page content in a few words, you are able to explain its content to your visitors.
The first impression people have of your page can affect whether or not they click on your link. This is why it's an important element of SEO.
Do meta descriptions affect rankings?
What effect do meta descriptions have on SEO? Basically, they don't have an impact on rankings. Searchers see them first when they encounter one of your pages, so they are an important component of your SEO strategy.
Why should you use SEO meta descriptions?
Providing meta descriptions for your website's content is important because it allows users to learn more about what your website is about. A meta description helps users determine the relevance of your site for a specific search query.
It is important to have a compelling meta description even if it does not directly affect page rankings.
How to create a great meta description
If Google thinks the meta description tag gives users a more accurate description than the on-page content alone, they may use the meta description tag in search results to generate a snippet.
With a meta description tag, users can get an idea of what a particular page is about in a short and relevant manner. The goal of the meta description is to convince the user that the website is the one they are looking for.
A meta description can be as long as it wants, but it is truncated in Google Search results as needed, typically to fit the device.
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A meta description should appear on each page of your site.
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Ensure that every page on your site has a unique description. If individual pages appear in search results, identical or similar descriptions don't help.
You should attempt to create descriptions for each page that are as accurate as possible. All other pages should be page-level descriptions, except for the site-level descriptions on the home page and other aggregation pages. At the very least, create a description for your home page and popular pages if you do not have time to describe every page.
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Make sure the description contains relevant information about the content. You can include information about your page in the meta description, which does not have to be in sentence format. Authors, publication dates, and bylines can be included in news or blog postings. Potential visitors can get extremely relevant information that might not appear in the snippet otherwise. It is also common for product pages to have key bits of information scattered throughout the page, such as price, age, manufacturer. A good meta description can bring all this data together.
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Make sure your descriptions are accurate. As a final note, you should make sure your descriptions are truly descriptive. Due to the fact that meta descriptions aren't displayed on the pages that users see, it's very easy to ignore this content. It is possible, however, to have a high-quality description display in Google's search results, which can go a long way in improving your search traffic quality and quantity.
Does Google rewrite meta descriptions?
In order to improve the quality of the meta descriptions, Google is rewriting them.
Most meta descriptions in organic search results are being rewritten by Google, according to recent research.
Approximately over 60% of unique page descriptions are rewritten by Google, according to Ahrefs.
It is estimated that 70% of page 1 mobile meta descriptions have been reworded, according to Portent.
