In my previous post, I covered the Best Practices for Writing Killer Meta Descriptions. While I did my best to cover the general parameters that lead to writing solid Meta Descriptions, I didn’t really get down to the nitty gritty. I know it may be hard to believe, but you can follow all of the “Best Practices” and still create really terrible descriptions.
For the purposes of this article, I’ll make up a scenario – then I’ll show you a couple of real-world examples of Meta Descriptions appearing in the search results. Then, I’ll show you how I would write it (i.e. what I think you could do to beat them) – and explain why!
The Scenario
In the scenario I’ve created, we’ll be working on a website in the automotive industry. We’ll be trying to determine a Meta Description for the homepage that targets keywords associated with our brand (I’ll use ‘Volvo’ as an example), as well as several general keywords related to the industry.
Brand: Volvo
Target Market(s): Columbus and suburbs
Relevant Keywords We Should Be Targeting: Volvo, New Cars, Used Cars, New Car Dealer, Used Car Dealer, New Volvo, Used Volvo, Volvo Cars, Volvo Dealer, 2008 Volvo, 2009 Volvo, 2010 Volvo
Our Pretend Dealer Name: Jake Stoops Volvo
Keep in mind that the above keywords also must be paired with the target market when considering local search implications (i.e. ‘volvo columbus’ or ‘new cars columbus’)
The Search
I performed the search ‘volvo columbus‘ and took a screenshot of the Top 10 SERP results and highlighted the descriptions.
SERP Position #1
Good: Solid use of target market and brand name at the beginning.
Bad: Basically wastes the rest of the space with generic marketing speak – instead of target keywords. Big waste of an opportunity to dominate for additional keywords.
SERP Position #2
Good: Does a fairly solid job of using brand name, service localities, as well as several keyword variations that could be tied together.
Bad: Uses the word ‘Midwestern’ in the first position – effectively wasting that prime space that could potentially be the difference between placing #1 and #2. Also, it runs past the character space cut-off, making the content after that point useless.
SERP Position #3
Good: This result is a little irrelevant, but this can sometimes happen with. If your target market is a popular city in more than one state – you can expect to receive some competition like this. They did do one thing good in mentioning the brand name and target market.
Bad: This description is just not very good. The use of phone numbers may be good for generating leads, but nobody searches like that – so don’t count on it generating much traffic.
SERP Position #4
Good: The only saving grace for this description is that they just happened to mention the brand name and target market.
Bad: Like the previous result, this description is almost exclusively using phone numbers – which nobody searches for. Big waste!
SERP Position #5
Good: Nothing.
Bad: This description is the worst offender, and I can only assume that other factors must be going into the achievement of a #5 ranking for this search term (i.e. title, on-page content, etc.)! However, based solely on the description, it has no place being in these results.
How I Would Do It
Below is how I might recommend writing a Meta Description – I think the format below could help outrank the above websites for ‘volvo columbus’, as well as all of the recommended target keywords above.
Description:
Why I like it?
- Makes good use of the first 50 character spaces – targeting several keyword variations simultaneously within that section.
- Uses keyword combinations rather than pure repetition.
- Mentions several appropriate keywords in a natural fashion – rather than simply listing them off repetitiously.
- Works in 3 target service areas.
- Doesn’t exceed the cut-off point of around 145-155 character spaces for typical homepage results (coming in at a cool 147 character spaces), ensuring that no target keywords/text goes unnoticed.
Now my above format isn’t the only way you can go about it – there’s more than one way to skin a cat. Also keep in mind that many other factors can/are influencing the search rankings.
However, I have a lot of success using similar methods. By using your wordsmith skills, I’m sure you can come up with something similar that helps you beat your competition for SEVERAL keywords consistently.
Well, that’s all for now – Happy Optimizing!
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