What is the Meta Description and why is it vital for SEO & CTR (Search Engine Optimization & Click-Through Rate)? This blog has the answers. Simply put the Meta Description is the snippet of text that appears in search engine results, just under the page or post title and URL link. It is this text that tells the person searching for answers on the search engines, what your page or post is all about. You can see an example of this in the image below.

Meta Description Examples

The search result at the top entitled, Build a Free Website without Programming is a keyword for a post on this website. As you can see, that keyword not only appears in the Title as it needs to be for best SEO results, but that keyword also appears in the Description. The general rule for proper SEO is to have the keyword appear in the title and in the first paragraph of the content. For more on the proper use of keywords, please see my Using Keywords page.

A must have for SEO and CTR

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is extremely important for every website. It is the ability of your website to be “optimized” so that the search engines can find your content and display it for people who are searching for that relevant information. Websites that are optimized are targeted for “organic” or non-paid search results.

For example, let us say that your website is about weight loss via juice fasting. By constructing your website with the proper use and placing of the keywords that pertain to juice fasting, you are making it easier for the search engines to find your content and display it when someone does a search for it. There are many factors that go into proper SEO, but I am going to just focus on the Meta Description.

Before I get to that I just want to touch on what does CTR mean. Click-Through Rate (CTR) is a measurement of how successful an advertising campaign, or in this case a web page description snippet, is at getting people to click on your link. When you can entice a person to click on your website link in the search engines, you are winning the battle of getting your CTR up and traffic coming to your website.

How important is the Meta Description Tag?

This snippet of text which is roughly 150-160 character spaces long, is in essence an advertising pitch. You need to have this text explain to those searching Google and the other search engines, what your page is about. You need to do this in the most truthfully compelling way so that those who read it will want to click on your link.

Now there are two ways of doing this if you are using the All in One SEO Pack plugin for WordPress, as I do on this website. First, the All in One has an auto generating description snippet that it will create from the first 150-160 character spaces of your content. This is not always a good feature to utilize if you do not start out your content with your keyword in that area of text.

All in One SEO Pack Meta TagsThis leads me to the second way of creating the description snippet, which is the way I prefer to do so if I should not start my content with the keyword. You simply would manually type in the description of what your web page or post is all about. Type into the blank description field, in the All in One SEO Pack area under the WordPress editor window, as seen in the picture to the right.

However with this particular blog post, I was able to create my content to start out with the keyword within the first 28 character spaces. By doing this I took advantage of the auto generating description feature of the All in One SEO Pack. However like I said above, there are times when this is not a good feature to use. For example, if you were look at The Wealthy Affiliate Review post I have on this website, you will see that the first words will list the company name, the owner names, the price, and the rating.

All of this does not make up an informative and enticing description snippet, so I had to manually type it in. The description for that post now reads,Get the latest SEO and training on how to build a WordPress website. The Wealthy Affiliate Review is my personal take on how to do this and start for free.” That snippet of text sounds more descriptive and compelling to the website searcher than what the auto generating feature of the All in One would have used.

You need to test different descriptions

Weeks after your web page has been indexed into Google, some may question why their page is not getting much traffic and will start looking for the solution. One thing you should try is to change your Meta Description Tag. Don’t just assume that what you have for your description is good enough. You want a description that is going to make someone who reads it, to want to click on it.

Google and the other search engines will use your Meta Description only if it is better than what they can pull from your content, that will answer the query of a person searching through Google. Watch the below video from Matt Cutts of Google, as he describes which Meta Tag is important and which one is not.

As you have just seen and heard from Matt Cutts, you should spend some time coming up with a compelling description that will help you to get more people to click on your listing. Remember, the more people you can get to click on your web page link, the higher your CTR and traffic will go. This can lead to more conversions and money in your pocket.

Be creative, be relevant, be descriptive, and entice those who search the internet for what you have to offer, so that they click on your link in the search engine results. If you have any questions on what I have just posted, please leave them below and I will get back to you with a reply.

What is the Meta Description - Vital for SEO & CTRhttps://legitimatejobfromhome.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/What-is-the-Meta-Description.jpghttps://legitimatejobfromhome.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/What-is-the-Meta-Description-300x300.jpgRobert Prescott2014 & 2015VideoGoogle,meta description tag,SEO,what is the meta description
What is the Meta Description and why is it vital for SEO & CTR (Search Engine Optimization & Click-Through Rate)? This blog has the answers. Simply put the Meta Description is the snippet of text that appears in search engine results, just under the page or post title and...