Killer Meta Descriptions: Best Practices
After a long, long hiatus – I’m finally back blogging! Due to my very busy life, I definitely needed to take some time off to reflect on what I wanted out of this blog – and more importantly, why I’m doing it! Now that the dust is settled, it’s time to get back to writing kick-ass SEO articles, and making it easy for others to follow.
Coming out of the shoot, my first article back will cover the best practices for writing meta descriptions that can truly work to enhance your position in the SERP’s. And now is when you say, Meta Tags aren’t important! That’s only half true.
According to Google, Meta Keywords are no longer used as a factor in their ranking algorithms (other sites still may analyze Meta Keywords, so don’t omit them from your strategy). However, Meta Descriptions generally “pop” underneath the search results, making that space pretty valuable. Writing good Meta Descriptions isn’t the end-all-be-all of SEO, but it is a really great way to improve your rankings within the SERP’s.
A. Meta Descriptions: General Best Practices
Use Your Target Keywords
This one may seem obvious but a lot of people don’t do it.
Write Naturally
Don’t just spam keywords, but instead try to write in a natural way while working target keywords into your copy.
Keyword Importance
Try to use target keywords in order of importance, with the most important being closer to the beginning.
Use Combinations
Search engines have the ability to understand keyword relationships – even when their not right next to each other (i.e. a search engine will know the “A blog about SEO tips and best practices…” may be target the terms ‘SEO tips’ as well as ‘SEO best practices’ even though ‘best practices’ doesn’t have the word ‘SEO’ in front of it).
Make Them Unique
Ensure that each page on your website has a unique Meta Description.
Make Them Content Specific
Ensure that each page’s Meta Description is relevant to the content that’s actually on the page (i.e. don’t stuff your tags full of keywords and expect to be taken seriously).
B. Meta Descriptions: Homepage
The Character Limit
I know this doesn’t seem like a lot of space, but you should try to keep your homepage Meta Descriptions around 145-155 character spaces. Why? This is generally the point at which they’re cut off in the SERP’s when your homepage is served up – or when the search queries are more general.
Keyword Targeting
The homepage Meta Description is the place to target your most important keywords. Try to stay with keywords here that are very general, but high traffic pullers as your homepage Meta Description should be your heavy hitter.
The Beginning Spot
If you have a choice (while writing naturally), use your most desirable keyword as close the the beginning as possible. The closer the proximity of your target keywords to the beginning of the tag, the more important they are generally weighted.
C. Meta Descriptions: Subpages & Categories
The Expanded Character Limit
These types of pages are more likely to show up for “long-tailed” keyword phrases, so don’t be afraid to expand these Meta Descriptions out to longer than 150-300 characters. You’ll notice that when a long-tailed keyword is searched, the SERP descriptions are expanded – making longer Meta Descriptions a must.
Content Specific
Use Meta Descriptions on Subpages and Categories to be more specific (and less general) in your keyword targeting. Be sure to target highly specific keywords that are relevant to on-page content.
Categories and Subpages are far more likely to show up for terms that are highly-specific (long-tailed) in nature. This will ensure a higher quality of traffic, and make it more likely that your subpages will show up for more specific search queries rather than your homepage.
Why is this good? Often, it is more beneficial for a visitor to land on a subpage rather than the homepage for a specific search query. The reason is simple. They are simply being landed on a page that is likely to be more relevant to the keyword they searched for, rather than the homepage which is often more general in nature. This way a user won’t have to search through your site as much to find what they want.
Well, that’s it for now – happy optimizing!
Related Posts
If you like this post, then you might like these as well!
Killer Meta Descriptions: Theory94 views : Comments
SEO-Friendly META Description Tag for Wordpress425 views : Comments
