Snappier Snippets Secured for SERPS! Google updates advice on Meta Descriptions - Your Daily Dose of Digital - 05/09/22

Before "Meta" was "Meta" and the Metaverse was a thing (which it isn't - I'll talk about this another time), Meta Data was the only Meta we needed to concern ourselves with - the Meta Title and Meta Description were key to presenting your site well in the SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages) and a well-written one would not only drive click-through, but also traditionally acted as one of the component signals to Google to index the page for certain search terms.

But then, Google started casually re-writing our carefully crafted meta titles and descriptions to suit what it felt was more relevant for the user (with varying degrees of success). Much to many an SEO exec's dismay. Recently, however, Google has updated it's advice surrounding meta data (and markup), giving more of a steer on how you can retain a level of control over how your page is displayed in search results.

Google explain: "A?snippet?is the description or summary part of search result on Google Search and other properties (for example, Google News). Google uses a number of different sources to automatically determine the appropriate snippet, including descriptive information in the meta description tag for each page. We may also use information found on the page, or create?rich results?based on markup and content on the page."

So, ultimately, it's a combo of old and new markup which can help steer Google's displayed descriptions.

Google says it "sometimes" uses?<meta>?tag content to generate snippets, "if they think they give users a more accurate description than can be taken directly from the page content". I think we all know it's more often than just "sometimes", provided they are written in a certain way. So, here's Google's latest Top 5 pieces of advice on creating better meta (metter?!):

1. Size does matter
2. Create unique descriptions for each page.
3. Make sure they're relevant to the actual page content.
4. Programmatically generate descriptions.
5. Use good quality descriptions (duh).

Let's explore these in more detail - firstly, length:

Google states: "A meta description tag generally informs and interests users with a short, relevant summary of what a particular page is about. They are like a pitch that convince the user that the page is exactly what they're looking for. There's no limit on how long a meta description can be, but the snippet is truncated in Google Search results as needed, typically to fit the device width."

Despite this advice, most SEO's will tell you that length does matter and that Google generally truncates snippets to between 155-160 characters, but ideally you want them to be short, sweet and snappy whilst being just long enough that they're sufficiently descriptive - Moz, SEMRush and other SEO platforms generally recommend between 50 and 150 characters to be safe.

As well as being the right length to pass the most basic of usability/usefulness tests, they also have to be unique to the page.

Let's face it, writing meta can be pretty boring and the temptation to just copy/paste or use a generic and default meta description for all your pages site wide or within a certain section of the site is huge. But, it's also lazy practice and really doesn't help users, let alone help Google index your content for it's true purpose.

Identical or similar descriptions on every page of a site aren't helpful when individual pages appear in search results. Google's advice? "Wherever possible, create descriptions that accurately describe the specific page. Use site-level descriptions on the main home page or other aggregation pages, and use page-level descriptions everywhere else. If you don't have time to create a description for every single page, try to prioritize your content; at the very least, create a description for the critical URLs like your home page and popular pages."

It's also important that they're not only unique, but relevant to the actual content on the page.

Google's advice: The meta description doesn't just have to be in sentence format; it's also a great place to include information about the page. For example, news or blog postings can list the author, date of publication, or byline information. This can give potential visitors very relevant information that might not be displayed in the snippet otherwise. Similarly, product pages might have the key bits of information—price, age, manufacturer—scattered throughout a page. A good meta description can bring all this data together."

Tip 4 is probably more suitable for large product aggregator sites, where hand writing individual meta descriptions en masse is particularly challenging and non-efficient. In this instance, programmatically creating meta descriptions may be an option. Programmatic generation of the descriptions can be appropriate in these circumstances and are encouraged. Good descriptions are human-readable and diverse. Page-specific data is a good candidate for programmatic generation.

Finally, it's important to ensure your descriptions are truly descriptive. Because meta descriptions aren't displayed in the pages the user sees, it's easy to let the quality of this content slide. But high-quality descriptions can be displayed in Google's search results, and can go a long way to improving the quality and quantity of your search traffic (improving CTR as users find the synopsis super-relevant). Here's a screengrab of some dos and don'ts from Google's updated article:

Hopefully these updated tips will prompt an adjustment in focus on your meta data, let me know in the comments below if you're already following these best practices, or if they've helped re-focus your energy on meta!