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Tips for Creating Effective Meta Descriptions | Movers Development

Tips for creating effective meta descriptions

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Perhaps you’re new to SEO and have heard the term ‘meta description’ thrown about while discussing how to elevate your ranking on SERPs. Or, maybe you’ve even gone as far as to even write one or more meta descriptions for your website or blog, but you’re not sure if you did it right. In either case, we’ve got you covered. At Movers Development, we believe that a meta description plays an important role in boosting search ranks and improving CTR. In this article, we compiled some of the best tips for creating effective meta descriptions that we could find.

What are meta descriptions?

Search results on a computer - Tips for creating effective meta descriptions
A good description can make or break your blog traffic and ranking.

Meta descriptions are basically 160-character summaries for each page and blog of your website. When you google something, meta descriptions are what show up under headings for each search result with the purpose of informing users of the content of a website before they click on it. Once they read the description, users determine if they’re interested or not and if they want to click on a search result or not. The better your description is, the higher the chance of someone clicking on your link.

How to write an effective meta description?

When it comes to creating effective meta descriptions, opinions often vary among experts. However, there are some suggestions most can agree on:

Keep it short & sweet

Keeping a meta description short is sort of the whole point of writing it. However, many people don’t find this obvious enough, so they struggle with writing long-winded sentences in their meta descriptions and end up with low CTR. This is obviously wrong. What they should be doing instead is giving only one or two short sentences about the subject of your blog or page. That’s enough to make the user click for more. It’s best to strive for under 155 characters so that Google doesn’t cut your description short.

Make it relevant

This is a crucial one. If you utilize the meta descriptions to deceive users into clicking on your result, Google will find out. Moreover, if you do that and they find out, they’ll most likely punish you for it. This alone is bad enough, but it’s not all. Inaccurate descriptions will also probably also raise your bounce rate and undermine public confidence in your business. To avoid all of this from happening, make sure each meta description corresponds with the subject of your blog or an article.

Think like the user

Stacked tiles that spell SEO.
Keywords, relevance, and length are all important elements of an effective meta description.

What is your user’s main problem that your blog aims to solve? Use that as an inspiration, and then offer that solution to your reader. Of course, you shouldn’t put the entire solution in your meta description, just enough to tickle the interest of your user and make them click.

For example, when you’re doing SEO for moving companies, you’re often helping people learn more about certain destinations or about packing or moving. In that case, one of our favorite methods is asking the user a question about a pain point (e.g., “Thinking of moving to Florida?”), and then saying we might have a solution for them (e.g., “Here’s everything you need to know…”, “check out some of the best destinations in Florida for…”).

Include a CTA

A call to action (CTA) can play a huge role in getting a user to click on your article or blog. Obviously, every user already knows what they have to do (e.g., click now, learn more, find out now, etc.), but putting it in writing can get them to act on it on a subconscious level.

Add your focus keyword

Another great tip for creating effective meta descriptions is to add your focus keyword or keyphrase to the description. That way, Google will be more likely to utilize it and promote it in the search results. This will further enhance the appeal of the connection to your website. Moreover, Google will occasionally highlight synonyms, so don’t be afraid to use those too.

To improve the overall ranking of your website and figure out what to write, you might have to do some keyword research beforehand. A part of keyword research is figuring out how you currently rank, which is a part of a greater website marketing analysis we offer for free.

Don’t overuse your keywords

Screenshot of SEO analytics for an unknown website.
If you write an irrelevant meta description or make it too clickbait-y, you’ll most likely see it affect your traffic over time.

Although we said your meta description should contain keywords, it should also look organic to the reader. You don’t want to overuse your keyword and end up with a meta description readers don’t understand or that looks too forced. This will make them less likely to click on your link and scroll down until they find something that makes more sense to them.

Make your meta descriptions interesting

As we already said, meta descriptions are crucial for drawing readers’ attention since they give a summary of the material on a page. To catch readers’ interest, try using clickbait headlines or attention-grabbing terms or phrases like “surprising,” “hilarious,” or “life-changing” to draw them in. However, be careful when choosing your words. You don’t want to make promises you can’t keep.

Keep them unique

Duplicating the meta descriptions on your website is still detrimental to SEO, even if Google won’t overtly punish you for it. Why is that? Well, search engines may label part of your material as low-quality or redundant if you have an excessive number of descriptions that are the same, which can lower your rating.

Final Thoughts

In the end, the key to creating effective meta descriptions is to not overthink them. Yes, you should add a keyword and try to make it short and snappy, but, for a start, any description is better than no description. If you notice a low CTR or a high bounce rate, you can try switching it up or testing a different meta description to see what gives you the best results. Humans are not an exact science, and neither is SEO. Sometimes all it takes is time until you see the results you’ve been waiting for.