Welcome to Tip #7 in our SEO Tips series were we’ll be talking all about meta descriptions.
Crafting unique meta descriptions for each of your web pages and blog posts can improve the page’s clarity and user experience — as well as increase your credibility.
What are Meta Descriptions?
In case you’re not familiar with the term, meta descriptions are the short paragraphs that Google shows as part of their search results.
Here’s an example of what the meta descriptions look like when I searched for “ice cream” (in the Madison, WI area) …
It’s important to know that meta descriptions are only for the human eye — and have no SEO value. In other words meta descriptions don’t affect search engine ranking. But they’re still important because when they’re well written they can evoke a feeling of trust and peace of mind. If people are reading one of your meta descriptions, it’s your first (and possibly only) chance to engage with them.
Until recently, meta descriptions needed to be a maximum of 156 characters long (including spaces). Once you went past that character count, you’d see an ellipsis at the end of the meta description. Now, Google is allowing up to 300 characters (including spaces), but I’m not seeing consistency from Google with this yet, so if you can still fit what you have to say in 156 characters or less, it might be a good idea to stick with that for now to make sure you’re not getting cut short by the ellipsis — like you see in some of the examples above.
Here’s an example of what the meta description looks like for Cuppa SEO’s web design page. Remember, the thing we want to do here is be clear and engage with the reader …
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- SEO Tip #4: Is Your Content Rich and Relevant — or Just Plain Yucky?
- SEO Tip #5: Soup Up Your Sub Headlines with SEO
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