SEO is an undeniably helpful marketing tool for any business – whether it is a startup or a long-established corporation.
When a business has implemented SEO successfully, it can help your pages to rank highly on Google, which in turn entices users to view your website.
In the modern age, without successful SEO implementation, your company can get left behind. In order to stand up to your competitors, you need to ensure that you are promoting your business and guaranteeing an excellent user experience.
When implementing an SEO strategy, it is important to consider and plan what you will write for the meta descriptions. For those that don’t know, a meta description is a small sentence (also referred to as a description tag) of around 155 characters that summarise a page’s content. It is crucial that you include a meta description as search engines will show it when a user types in a certain phrase or a question. It can also affect your businesses organic traffic results – making you lose out on potential new traffic to your site.
If you own a start-up business and are looking to start utilising SEO or perhaps you are an established business looking for ways in which to increase the traffic to your website, using a killer meta description for each page that you want to rank highly against your competitors is key.
But how do you write a killer meta description? Here are the five key steps:
Entice the customer by using a CTA (Call to Action) in the meta description
A marketing 101, using a call to action within your website (in general) will entice the customer/client to find out more about your service/product and can even lead to them purchasing it. Many businesses use call to actions, whether it be on their TV or radio adverts or directly on their website. But a call to action can also be used within a meta description – as it is the first thing that a customer sees when they search through Google/Bing or whatever search engine they are using. Here are a couple of examples of CTA’s you can use to draw customers in:
- Click here to find out more..
- Learn more about…
- The latest news on…
- Come and buy *this*
- Check out the latest deals on…
Make sure that you create a concise meta description
As you only have between 150 – 160 characters for a meta description, you want to make sure that you are writing it concisely with the most important information placed carefully within it. Google will trim it if it is more characters, therefore you need to ensure that the description you are writing is fitting to your service or product, it is enticing for your customers and that it is optimised correctly for the search engine.
Don’t trick your potential customers with false information
Even though you need to entice them into clicking onto the link for your website, your meta description needs to not deceive them by offering false promises. If you write something in the meta description that doesn’t correctly match the content that exists on your website, as soon as the customer goes onto the page, they will leave. This has the negative result of increasing the bounce rate and can drop your search engine rank.
Write for the customer, not for the search engine
You don’t want to fill your meta descriptions with spam words. Not only will this cause the search engine to penalise what you have written (it stands out like a sore thumb), but it will also convince potential customers to look elsewhere as the description won’t concisely describe what they have searched for. No one likes to look at a website that has used spam words to try and rank highly on the search engine – it looks cluttered and can have the opposite effect.
Use a unique meta description for each page
This helps with ensuring that your links are optimised, that it is ranking more organically and that customers can find exactly what they are looking for. In creating a unique meta description for each page, you should try and include a primary keyword. By using a tool such as Google Keyword Planner you can see what the highest ranking relevant terms are. You can then choose one of these and utilise it within your meta description – improving your page’s ranking on the search engine and fitting the exact search terms.
Bonus step –
Utilise ‘power words’
Alongside a call to action, try using a power word in your meta descriptions. This will create an impactful impression and, yet again, draw the customers attention to your website above your competitors. Examples of these are ultimate, guaranteed and extraordinary – all of which make the user want to find out more about what you’re offering them. It will boost your meta description and make your website stand out. Remember – don’t spam and try to create a valuable description.
Conclusion
They are the six key steps in writing a killer meta description for your website. An important thing to remember is to not leave the description tag empty. If you do, you will miss out on potential leads, costing your business money in the long run. You need to create a meta description for each web page which is concise, has a call to action, utilises power words, is unique to each page written for the customer and is legitimate. You don’t want your web pages to disappear into the abyss of search engine results. You want your web pages to shine and create a lasting impact that not only creates a great click-through rate but also brings in repeat purchases – whether you are selling a product or a service.
A strategy that is used by millions of companies across the world in the present technological age, you shouldn’t underestimate the power of a great meta description in your SEO campaign.
