16
Nov
Meta Description Content Sells a Page
stored in: Online Marketing Strategies, Organic Marketing and tagged:
By Scott Bateman

Meta description content promotes a page to search engine visitors the way advertising promotes an entire Web site. Essentially, it is a sales pitch.

It has been reported — and Google’s Webmaster Central backs it up — that a document that gets the top spot in search results can receive up to a 40 percent or more click rate. Second place sees a steep decline, third sees even more decline and so forth.

But a well-written description for a fourth place result can get a great click-through rate, especially if the content of the top three results are poorly written.

Adding the Meta Tag

The meta description is a tag that appears within the <head> tags of a document. It looks something like this:

<meta name=”description” content=”Learn effective online marketing strategies including SEO, pay per click advertising and social media promotions.” />

The description content lies within the quotes. It appears in search engines like this:

Meta description content example

Meta description content example

The meta description length is limited to about 255 characters including spaces. So the quantity of the content is limited. It is the quality that can make a difference in whether or not someone clicks.

Writing the Content

Think about writing a meta description with content that doesn’t appeal to searchers:

  • Don’t include critical keywords or keyword phrases.
  • Use question sentences that make it unclear the topic of the page.
  • Use dull and nondescript language.
  • Be as boring as possible.

In traditional newspaper journalism, the first paragraph of a news story is considered the most important paragraph of the entire story. It is the hook that encourages the reader to read more.

In online media, this approach is one tactic of something often called link baiting. It is baiting the hook with language that is interesting, informative, funny or appealing in some way.

5 Important Tips

Consider five steps in the writing of meta description:

  1. Start with the critical keywords or keyword phrases that have been identified from the site document and through keyword research.
  2. Alternate long and short sentences.
  3. Keep the number of syllables for each word as few as possible.
  4. Be creative. Go beyond simple description to write something unique.
  5. Complement the page title rather than mimic it.
  6. Use the most important keyword in both the title and in the description.

The effectiveness of the meta description content is secondary to the title, but well-written content will lead to more clicks, which will boost the ranking of the document in search engine result pages.

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