Whether you’re just getting started with SEO or you’ve been managing an SEO strategy for years, you can’t discount the importance of meta descriptions (or meta tags). A website’s meta tags are important if you want it to attract potential customers. Meta tags are used by search engines to determine what the website is about and play a major role in getting users to click-through to your website.
What Are Meta Tags?
A meta description describes the content of a website in a brief manner. Meta descriptions are used to display general descriptions of a page on a search engine’s results pages (SERPs), which are an important part of SEO. In essence, the description tag is a short paragraph that describes accurately and succinctly what the content of the web page is about to users and the Googlebot.
Typically, you would view a meta description under the titles of the results on the SERP. It’s often no larger than 160 characters and briefly describes what the content is about. The best way to think about it is like the back of a novel – a short description about what is on this page.
Importance of Meta Descriptions In SEO
As you may have known, the meta description tag was used for keyword stuffing in the past. Therefore, Google changed its algorithm so the description tag no longer affects the site’s rankings. However, it does affect the click-through rate and traffic of a website because the description tag is to let the user know and understand what the website content is, so if the content interests the user, they will click on the URL.
Including meta description tags in on-page optimization is recommended by SEO experts since it is an opportunity to make a good impression on visitors. A meta description tag should also be written in such a way that it describes the content correctly, and it is recommended that each web page be given its own meta description tag.
In the same way as the title tag, the meta description plays a crucial role in the Google index, but is also important for the user experience. Webmasters can advertise the brand and quality of their site to the user in this short paragraph. By understanding the psychology of customers and giving them what they need precisely, webmasters may be able to reduce the cost of outdoor advertising and improve its effectiveness.
Having an effective meta description that focuses on the main topic will encourage users to click on the website not only on the search results page, but also on social ads or other websites, which will result in increased visits. In addition, optimizing a good meta description helps build quality content for users on the page as well as increase the click-through rate on the search results page.
The Takeaway
In on-page SEO, optimizing the meta description is very important, as it is a key element for each page. Although the meta description does not affect Google’s keyword ranking process, it acts as a bridge to customers. It’s imperative that you clearly advertise what your page is about to be sure you can reach more users and increase your overall site traffic.