The Right Time for Writing Meta Descriptions
A great deal of webpages which serve embedded videos, widgets, and apps lack descriptive text for Google to apply for the description.
Topics for The Right Time for Writing Meta Descriptions
Meta descriptions are still significant – while they are not always. Not all web pages should have one. Here is what you should know. A great amount of old-school SEO discussion was spent on meta descriptions – length, content, use of keywords, etc.
The question is – are meta descriptions still significant? Does changing your meta descriptions have an effect on SEO?
You have seen a website audit with a crawl through your favorite SEO tool. However, you are alerted that hundreds, thousands, or millions of pages on the website are missing meta descriptions.
Are you scared?
You can tell your manager that you should spend the next month writing 155-character descriptions for every webpage on the website. However, is that the best use of time for you?
Some pages do not need a meta description. Here is the reason.
Why You May Not Aim to Write the Meta Description
Google is Always Testing and Changing the Approach Search Results Appear
The limit for showing meta-descriptions has changed many times. Up to 260-275 characters from ~150-165 characters then back to 165 characters. Through the SEO industry, the best methods on how long meta descriptions should be transformed.
Such changes led to many results being optimized for the past shorter version looking sub-optimal. When people have transformed meta descriptions to the new length, … Google could change it back.
It takes a considerable amount of time for optimizing around such changes and most websites would have been better during such a period with no meta description instead of one that was too long or too short.
Limiting Resources by Organizations
Though Google suggests that you “Ensure that every page on your website has a meta description,” they have stated that their application of the tag in developing search result pages is light.
“Sometimes, Google will use thedescription tag from a page to create a search results snippet, if we reckon that it provides users with a more valid description than would be possible merely from the on-page content.”
The “sometimes” is fulfilling a lot of work.
Is your time is better spent on optimizing meta descriptions which are only sometimes applied by search engines – or optimizing the content which is always used by search engines and users? Google Normally Writes Its Description Snippet
Google almost constantly writes its description snippet, even if you prepare a meta description.
A study which compared the before and after of Google’s description length change realized that Google applied words from the first paragraph of content on the page in two-thirds of cases in order to develop a description for the snippet.
Your time might be better spent on optimizing the first paragraph instead of optimizing meta description tags, if the purpose is to affect description snippets.
Forcing Google to Develop Description Snippets is Mostly a Great Thing
Your meta description which was turned into the words involved in the snippet on the SERP, has as much an opportunity of driving a visitor away as it performs welcoming them in.
Google’s John Mueller has stated one cause for rewriting meta descriptions as they aim to match the search query with the page accurately.
As you say more in the snippet, the greater chance of decreasing the mystery of what is behind the click.
Most of the blog posts depend on a great variety of long-tail keywords and answer a great deal of very hard questions in a single post’s content.
Let us say that you write an article on apples, where you have a good description on oranges. Your meta description is about apples – and users who search for the information on oranges will think that your website cannot have such information.
By a static description, the search result snippet is less probably to contain the keywords used by the searcher. Such a risk is less related compared to the Google-generated snippet.
Not All Pages Are Equally Important for SEO
Big websites often contain thousands or millions of pages which will never drive significant amounts of natural search traffic. Reckon about your privacy policy – how many original visitors do you get there?
It is a waste of time to keep meta descriptions on webpages manually which have no potential for ranking.
Avoid allowing your consultant or toolset to deceive you; you do not have a need to meta description on every single page or even close to every single page.
Keep it in mind that all content needs future maintenance. It would be much better to have no meta description compared to a poor or outdated one.
While auditing your website for meta descriptions, differentiate between such pages which do and do not need them and just keep those pages which are necessary.
Thus, when do you need a meta description?
4 Times When You Should Absolutely Prepare a Meta Description
Homepage
Your homepage is perhaps your most critical webpage, thus the homepage deserves a perfect meta description.
Many homepages are navigational, have more imagery elements, and less paragraph text in comparison to other pages on-site meaning the requirement for a meta description is enhanced. If the text on a page is less, the more likely it would be to require a meta description.
If you can manage the website for a known brand, the homepage meta description presents an opportunity to affect the perception of the company on the search results page directly.
Product and Category Pages
If your website helps your organization to make sales, your product and category pages are probably the most critical pages on your website to serve the late-stage prospect interest.
These are the most significant pages to get right and are also worth spending your time fine-tuning.
Content Which is Seen on Google
If your website contains 2000 old posts but only the top 10% drive important search traffic, focus your efforts on such posts.
Enhancing the meta description for old content which is not ranked will not enhance your traffic or website — though your SEO tool might tell you something else!
Enhance the descriptions for pages which have important impression.
Pages in Natural Search but Lacking Text Content
A great deal of webpages which serve embedded videos, widgets, and apps lack descriptive text for Google to apply for the description.
For resources pages and other pages which are mainly a list of links, Google cannot pull from to develop an optimal description.
In such cases, a website should prepare a meta description for search engines to use.
The golden rule is: The less text on a page, the more significant a meta description.
Best Time to Ignore Alerts, Best Practices and Guidelines
In a complete world in which an SEO professional has as many team members to meta descriptions and transform them in a sea of pages on Google, all webpages must have meta descriptions.
Nevertheless, we are limited by time and should select which tactics are worthy. It is significant to reconsider whether such best practices deserve the time investment.
It is controversial but true. If you are not going to rank with a page, meta descriptions cannot be worthy of the trouble of maintenance.
It would be better to encourage Google to craft description snippets.