When optimising for web pages, performance optimisation and off page techniques are the most common list toppers. However, there are on-page optimisation techniques that are worth looking into before you step out of your site and promote it elsewhere. One aspect of SEO is optimising meta descriptions of your pages.
Meta descriptions will not directly influence your ranking signal in an upward trend, but they deserve much attention than you might be giving it. Here's why:
-Meta descriptions provide a window to your page in SERP; it's your first chance at showing visitors that your content is what they are looking for.
-Properly optimised meta description will entice your visitors to click and increase your click-through rate (CTR).
If you are convinced that meta descriptions play an important role in optimising your site pages, you must be careful not to commit these mistakes with meta descriptions.
Duplicate Meta Descriptions
Google says that good meta descriptions act as short blurbs that describe your page's content and are like sales pitches that convince users that the content is what they are looking for. A meta description then should be unique; unless there is a duplicate content issue (whose fix we might discuss somehow in a different post).
If pages have similar meta descriptions, it will mislead users and will not be encouraged to click on your link. Imagine how many users will not reach your page, thinking that the content is different from what they want to see. You can never tell. The best practice is to have unique meta descriptions for your site pages. Otherwise, you can do the following to avoid duplicates:
If you are unable to write meta descriptions, you can let Google automatically generate it. Google will pull relevant parts of your content and come up with a meta description to feature in the snippet.
For more or less similar pages (e.g. similar products, product variants), you can use a template and replace keywords to make their descriptions different (not necessarily unique, but not duplicates as well)
Remember that the more unique and more relevant your content is with the query, the better chances visitors will click your link.
Character Limit
The SEO practice for many years was to set the meta description between 100-160. However, that changed recently in 2017. If you look closely in the SERP, the character count now can be as long as 320 characters. Here are a few things about the length of meta descriptions:
Google’s longer search snippets are sized based on pixels and not characters, so it’s the pixels that matter over the character count. Based on the device width, the ideal 160-320 characters length which is equivalent to 920-1,840 pixels. So for shorter meta descriptions, it’s not necessary to stretch it by adding in more characters.
At times, Google does not use the provided meta description. Depending on the search query, it may pull out relevant parts of the page content, and the result can be a longer meta description generated for the page. So having said that, it is not necessary to worry about the ideal number of characters for your meta descriptions.
Not Using Keywords in the Meta Description
Adding the right keywords or rather, key words in your meta description will make it easily identifiable to users as relevant to their search. Of course, it should be relevant to the page content. If the meta description is not relevant to the content, Google will pull relevant phrases from the page and show it instead the search results. The downside to this is that you don’t have control over the meta description that gets displayed in the search results. Moreover, the meta description may look like a combination of truncated descriptions pulled out of context.
Not Optimizing for Rich Snippets
The competition to the top spot can only get tougher and tougher. Thus, we cannot underscore the fact structured data or “rich snippets” are a must. Rich snippets will make it easy for search engine to understand your content, giving you more chances to get to the top ranking positions. Depending on your type of content, rich snippets can make a big difference to your meta descriptions so make sure to optimise for them.
To illustrate, on a query using the keywords “Samsung J7 features,” notice that a rich snippet occupies the top spot. It actually follows a sponsored content.
Check out the hierarchy of schema types here. If you are new to schema types, check out Google’s guidelines.
Avoiding HTML Tables for Direct Answer Queries
Because Google aims to organize the world’s information to make it universally accessible and useful to all, it has direct preference for websites that directly answers queries from searchers.
Just like rich snippets, HTML tables can give you an edge over competition. It provides easy-to-consume, digestible pieces of information about your search without having to link away from the SERP. Combine both to your advantage by preparing detailed answers to question-based search queries. Then, implement HTML with structured data.
Writing A Boring Copy
This is by far, the easiest way to go unnoticed. If you take time to understand the information that your users are looking for and put it in a way that’s creative and appealing, it can go a long way. Your content will stand out and increase traffic, click-throughs and eventually, conversions.
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