Why do I need to write meta descriptions?
-
I work at a marketing firm, and was trying to convince my boss that we need to start writing meta descriptions for all pages on the sites we develop for clients.
He asked why this would be necessary since Google automatically pulls a snippet of content, containing the keyword(s) that had been searched, from any page listed in its SERPs.
I didn't have an answer for this, and it got me wondering: When does Google actually display the meta descriptions that people write instead of scraped content?
And is it really that necessary to write meta descriptions?
-
Cool! Thanks Doug!
-
Here's an article I found about search snippets affecting click throughs. (In this case it was the presence of an article date that was causing a drop in CTR.)
Evidence of “SERP Snippet” Impact on Clickthrough Rates
And this article about boosting traffic by changing your snippets:
Easy Way To Boost Your Search Engine Traffic
I agree, that it would be to do some more testing of the impact of optimising the snippet for conversion.
-
Has there been any research done on CTR for written descriptions vs. snippets grabbed by Google? Personally, I hardly ever look at meta descriptions when searching for something. My judgement is mostly based on the title tag.
Logically, it makes sense that a well-crafted description would be better, but I'd like to see some hard evidence to back that up.
-
If you have a key generic keyword phase that describes the product but not the brand and is strong ($10 PPC), should these phrases be first?
Also, should my brand names be in Meta tags?
Note that I prefer responses from individuals familiar with Yahoo RTML. due to what I think is automatic meta tags.
-
Yep, with good meta descriptions traffic will hit 88mph in no time.
-
Tell your boss that the website's flux capacitor will get overloaded without a good meta description.
-
If your meta-description doesn't contain the search keywords then google may view a section of your page that does as more relevant and return that instead.
-
Traffic is pretty quantifiable, but conversion perhaps less so. What good are strong SERP's if users aren't clicking through to your site and converting. Well written meta descriptions are an important part of the funnel, and what is the cost of creating them? Time?
-
No, it didn't. Is that the only way Google will display the meta description? If so, that makes sense and clears up my confusion.
-
Did the meta-description have the keywords in?
-
It really depends on the page and the website. But, as a rule, I think it's always smart to write a meta-description to gain the trust and attention of your potential visitors. As you probably know, the meta-description usually shows up under the Title and URL in a Google result. This bit of text could potentially set you apart from your competition.
It's true that Google will grab a bit of text and use that for a description of the page by default, but Google is a robot and probably isn't going to grab the most important text in the article. It will simply grab some text with the related keywords usually. It certainly isn't going to put together a catchy sentence / summary for searchers to read.
To make this as clear as possible, let's take a search for "cheap headphones":
We have the #1 site that uses a meta-description -
"Cheap headphones and discount headphones, Get information on all types of headphones and find the secret to getting the best deals and what website sells them for the best price."Then we have the #2 site that is letting Google choose its meta-description text. It looks like this:
"20 results – Our top picks for the best cheap headphones around in 2010.| $19.95 | sugg. retail price: $22.95 | Kidz Gear Headphones | Excellent ... |
| $19.99 | sugg. retail price: $19.99 | Koss KSC 75 |Surprising high ..."
|
These aren't great examples because the #1 site has a description meta-tag that is too long. But I think it gets the point across. It's a lot nicer to read something that is concise and grabs the searcher's attention than to hope Google is going to pull the best information for the user. Human wins vs. Google this time. (for now).
-
I'm confused about exactly when Google displays your meta description, instead of a random snippet. I just did a search using a term that I knew would bring up a site I'm familiar with. I know for a fact that meta descriptions were written for every page on the site (not by me), but Google didn't display one when I did my search and the site turned up in the SERPs. Instead, it displayed a random snippet with the keywords that I had used in bold.
Why is this?
-
And is it really that necessary to write meta descriptions?
Your boss is a marketing man?
I can't imagine a marketing man who is willing to give up control of the sales pitch.
He needs a kick in the pants.
Why are we paying him... just let google do it.
-
Do you want to rely on google picking the most compelling piece on content from your page and hope that this will be more attractive than the carefully crafted meta-descriptions that your competition have produced.
Your entry in the SERPS result is probably the first thing that someone will see about your website. Think of your title and description as a kind of small-ad and make it as compelling as possible. A well crafted description can really make a difference.
With a well crafted description and title you can get more traffic than the #1 ranking site.
-
Because a well written meta description can be much more compelling and generate better click through from the SERPs than a random snippet of copy from the page.
Use everything you already know about writing good calls-to-action and apply them to your meta tags and see if CTR improves. If it does (and I bet it will) then you'll know exactly why it's worth it to write a good meta description.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Meta keywords
should every site have meta keywords or is this not used anymore? I don't use yoast and prefer rank math but there is nowhere to insert it. when I look at moz bar it shows meta keywords as a field so maybe it is important...
On-Page Optimization | | Mosaj0 -
Writing cornerstone content for a shop (eCommerce) website
Hi there I am trying to optimise my site to the best that it can be. Since the most recent Google updates, everything that I reading is saying cornerstone content with lots of valuable content is a really good strategy as it tells Google what is the most important content on your site. Writing articles that are well structured and have give the user a detailed overview of that subject. Lots of top SEO's are saying 3000 words plus on these pages. My question is, how do I go about this with and eCommerce site? Obviously that majority of the keywords that I want to target are product related and these are the pages that I want to come up in the search. How do I go about creating cornerstone content for these pages? I am thinking that one of my cornerstone pieces of content would be "The Ultimate Guide to [my main product category]". But that product has numerous products related to it, all of which have their own keywords, so how would this help the products to rank? The site had two main product categories, with numerous products under each of those categories. The two main categories are targeting my best performing keywords, but currently the landing page for these is the main product category pages. I am really struggling to work out the best strategy here. The content that I have on my actual products pages is comprehensive and covers a lot of detail about that particular product and has started to rank for product keywords, but I am guessing Google wouldn't consider that to be cornerstone content. I hope this make sense. Any advice anyone can give would be really useful. Many thanks in advance
On-Page Optimization | | Clojobobo1 -
Duplicate 'meta title' issue (AMP & NON-AMP Pages)
how to fix duplicate meta title issue in amp and non-amp pages? example.com
On-Page Optimization | | 21centuryweb
example.com/amp We have set the 'meta title' in desktop version & we don't want to change the title for AMP page as we have more than 10K pages on the website. ----As per SEMRUSH Tool---- ABOUT THIS ISSUE It is a bad idea to duplicate your title tag content in your first-level header. If your page’s <title>and <h1> tags match, the latter may appear over-optimized to search engines. Also, using the same content in titles and headers means a lost opportunity to incorporate other relevant keywords for your page.</p> <p><strong>HOW TO FIX IT</strong></p> <p>Try to create different content for your <title> and <h1> tags.<br /><br />this is what they are recommending, for the above issue we have asked our team to create unique meta and post title for desktop version but what about AMP page?<br /><br />Please help!</p></title>0 -
Whats wrong with meta title? In SERP it looks different.
Hi, can someone tell me why my meta titles looks different in SERP? I use Prestashop CMS and meta title in many pages looks similair to this one: Puodų Rinkiniai | Puodai | Iki -40% Akcija | ŠefoSvajonė.lt And in SERP it looks like this: Puodų Rinkiniai - sefosvajone.lt. sefosvajone.lt Why can this be? Its freshly indexed. Rather than set Meta Title text it shows just name of the Product or Category and then shops adress twice or sometimes once. Thanks!
On-Page Optimization | | Absurdus0 -
Which Meta Tags would you recommend having on the pages?
Hello, There are so many different meta tags which you can implement to the header of your website and I'm wanting to get people's opinions on which you feel are worth putting in and which are completely pointless? For example: Author Copyright Language Content-Type Content-Language Distribution Abstract Keywords Description Classification Canonical Expires Revisit-after Rating I look forward to hearing your comments and suggestions. Kind Regards, Shaun Swales Twitter: Https://www.twitter.com/CryptCommerce
On-Page Optimization | | ShaunSwales0 -
Meta descriptions better empty or with duplicate content?
I am working with a yahoo store. Somehow all of the meta description fields were filled in with random content from throughout the store. For example, a black cabinet knob product page might have in its description field the specifications for a drawer slide. I don't know how this happened. We have had a programmer auto populate certain fields to get them ready for product feeds, etc. It's possible they screwed something up during that, this was a long time ago. My question. Regardless of how it happened. Is it better for me to have them wipe these fields entirely clean? Or, is it better for me to have them populate the fields with a duplicate of our text from the body. The site has about 6,500 pages so I have and will make custom descriptions for the more important pages after this process, but the workload to do them all is too much. So, nothing or duplicate content for the pages that likely won't receive personal attention?
On-Page Optimization | | dellcos1 -
Meta Keywords, Should I just remove them?
howdy guys, I am helping my father out with his SEO for his company. I am taking over the SEO helm so to speak and have to do a complete on site make over( offsite as well eventually soon) He has on every page meta keywords that are just stuffed with "money keywords" and they are the same on every page, Should i just delete them entirely and leave that attribute blank? Hope to hear back soon, thanks.
On-Page Optimization | | david3050 -
I need quality backlinks. Do they need to be similar to company website?
Our website seems to be well optimized. However I need to find more quality backlinks. I am having a hard time with this. Do backlinks have to related to the company? The reason I ask is because I can receive some links, but they do not relate to our company. BUT sometimes we have customers come to our facility and we book them a local hotel room and send them to near by restaurants. Is it ok to have local restaurants and local hotels links on our website and have them link to ours, on a page for customer visits. OR any other tips on receiving quality backlinks?
On-Page Optimization | | hfranz0