Meta Descriptions: What Are They and How Do They Impact SEO?

What are meta descriptions?

Meta descriptions provide quick explanations of the contents of a web page and are HTML tags, and just like?title tags, they appear on every webpage.

While not essential for any website, meta descriptions have been used by web designers for years to describe the content of that specific webpage.

Furthermore, meta descriptions can display under your website in Google’s search results.?

Therefore, well-written meta descriptions are extremely important in gaining user click-through from Google, as these short paragraphs are your chance to advertise your content to searchers and let them know exactly what the given page contains.

However, it is not 100% certain that Google will use your meta description on its results page, and like with title tags, if they are not done or are poor, Google will use its own.

Do meta descriptions have any impact on SEO?

Well, not directly.

Unfortunately, years ago, people used to spam their meta descriptions and keywords fields with the hope of it improving their rankings.?Like any underhanded practice, Google picked up on this and disavowed any SEO impact for the meta description field, but they are still used on the search results pages.

Therefore, since meta descriptions show in the search engine results, they can affect CTRs (click-through rates), which are linked to SEO & rankings.

So, in theory, meta descriptions might have an impact on SEO and are generally always looked at on the website and SEO audits.

How do you write meta descriptions?

In the early days of website design, you had to write the meta description directly into the document, however, these days most websites are built on a content management system, such as WordPress or similar to our Gravity sites, which easily allow one to add and edit meta descriptions.

Infoserve has always made it their practice to write meta descriptions for every?website?we build and for any?SEO project?started.

Tips for writing effective meta descriptions

Here are some handy tips for writing concise meta descriptions.

• Keep the meta description under 150-160 characters, Google will cut off the rest.
• Make each meta description unique to that page.
• Include your page's keyword in the description.
• Treat each page as its own website, and explain what is on ‘that’ page.
• Make your meta descriptions readable, not a list.

How to check on a websites meta descriptions

Run the website through our?free digital marketing audit tool.

Our marketing tool acts as a?website audit?and?SEO audit?platform and can show you how the meta descriptions are scored.

If our audit is picking up issues with your?meta descriptions,?contact our friendly team?and we can advise you on how we can help you.

Or check out our?websites?and?SEO?product pages.