What is a meta description?
The meta description is a tag in HTML that summarizes a page’s content.1
With Yoast’s SEO plugin you can easily add the meta description ie a summary of what you think is the main content without needing to know HTML. The words you provide may appear in a google search. Or sometimes depending on what the person searches for, Google may display an extract from your page’s content and not the meta description you have provided.
Below you can see a screenshot of where you add the meta description in Yoast SEO plugin on a page.
In the example below you can see the meta description that appears in a search ie “Coffee was once considered unhealthy…)
Some tips for writing a good Meta Description
- Give a good relevant summary of what your page is actually about and what it contains. There is nothing more annoying than reading that excerpt in a Google search, only to land on the page and find that the page doesn’t really deliver on its content promises.
- Include the important your chosen keyword phrase
- Consider that the meta description is basically your sales pitch. So use action-oriented language. Do you want people to click through to make a purchase or click through to learn something? Be clear about the intent of the page’s content.
- Remember that someone is searching because they want something. So include the solution or the benefit.
- Curiosity is good
- If you are not a gifted writer then it is worth paying a copywriter.
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