Meta Description Optimisation

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Meta Description Optimisation for Search Engines

Meta Description is the short snippet of text that can only be found right underneath the Landing Page URL in SERPs. To be entirely accurate, the Meta Description is a pseudo-internal ranking factor. In other words, it does not directly influence rankings, but it can and does influence the click-through rate and the user expectations about the Landing Page, which has implications for users’ onsite behaviour.

To put it simply, a Meta Description that provides an accurate expectation for the Landing Page and which is optimised for click-through rate over time is likely to have a positive influence on the organic rankings. Apart from being visible in SERPs, Meta Descriptions may also surface on social media networks (when no Open Graph description is provided) populating the description fields. However, the websites that are heavily reliant on social media may have some scope to use supplementary description tags aimed at social media platforms in particular to take full advantage of their unique context and technical specifications, such as description lengths.

Optimising Meta Descriptions for Users

The Meta Description of a page is the second most important element for a user in determining what the landing page is about, after the Page Title and is, by design, the element capable of accommodating a slightly more in-depth picture of the content that is hosted on the URL at hand.

Keywords exactly matching the Search Query are featured in bold, which are often used by users to understand whether the given page is likely to address their search intent. The more long-tailed the search query is, the more likely the users are to rely on this additional insight offered by meta descriptions to make their click-through decision. The targeting of long-tail Search Queries is more often employed by follower sites rather than market leaders. This is the reason for Meta Description to be of paramount importance in a strategy which has the aim of outranking the leading websites.

Writing and Structuring Meta Descriptions

Depending on the website’s ability to outrank its SERP competition, the Meta Description, in addition to the head terms of the Landing Page, is also the best place for employing synonyms, keyword variations and keyword modifiers to paint a clearer picture of the web page contents. Like in the case of Page Titles, when you have two similar versions of Meta Descriptions, the one featuring the most important keywords at the beginning should be preferred to that featuring them at the end. This can be explained by search queries offering an increased “unique value at first glance” leading to marginally better click-through rates.

Optimal Meta Description Lengths

Traditionally, the Meta Description length is considered to be at its best at 155 characters long. However more recently meta descriptions of 300 characters or longer started to become used by Search Engines increasingly more often. The share of short and long meta descriptions can vary significantly across SERPs and it is reasonable to assume Search Engines will continue to experiment on this topic. So given the actual meta-description lengths visible in SERPs may vary, planning for a meta-description optimisation strategy that will allow for testing and reviewing over time is highly advised.

The use of CAPS; Acronyms, and Nontraditional Characters;

It is generally considered that the use of CAPS in Meta Descriptions does not directly affect rankings. However, caps are significantly larger in size and thus occupy more pixel space. Similarly, the text written in CAPS will stand out among the other search results and while this will likely draw attention, it will also associate it with SPAM.

Nonetheless, the use of CAPS shouldn’t be discouraged as long as it serves a purpose other than drawing attention, as in the case of acronyms. On a similar note, W3C recommends the use of abbreviation tags to indicate what they stand for, Meta Descriptions not being an exception to this. Although Search Engines have learned to associate the abbreviations with their corresponding meaning, less common examples or those that may have multiple interpretations could still use disambiguation through the use of the HTML abbreviation tag.

Synonyms, Keyword Variations and Keyword Modifiers in Meta Descriptions

Although Search Engines are getting increasingly better at recognising the meaning behind words, synonyms and Keyword Variations not being an exception to the rule, niche examples may not always be as evident to a Search Engine as they are to an industry specialist. Nonetheless, the use of multiple terms, whether synonyms or variations of the same keyword, in Meta Descriptions should only be allowed if they, in fact, target the needs of the user at that first moment of exposure to the Meta Description in SERPs. Otherwise, they may be better suited as part of the body content, at a later point in the user journey.

Keyword modifiers are a select number of words used as extensions to the head keywords most often utilised to target long-tail search queries. The selection of keyword modifiers should be initially made by such Keyword Metrics as search volumes and keyword difficulty. At a later stage, once the landing page starts receiving traffic, the use of keyword modifiers can be further refined based on onsite user engagement and conversion rates.

Keyword Stuffing and Other Negative Practices in Meta Description Optimisation

Keyword stuffing can be broadly defined as the practice of using keywords anywhere on the website that has the intent of misleading Search Engines. Over time Search Engines have learned to recognise such practices and penalise the websites that use them.

As the search engines continue to evolve and get better at recognising the use of keyword stuffing, in the future the use of any keywords that are aimed to appeal to search engines at the expense of the user are likely to be labelled as such. It may be worth noting though, that at current times websites are very unlikely to get penalised by search engines for simply using the wrong keywords, only those using such keyword-stuffing practices at scale are likely to find themselves in trouble.

Missing, Unique and Duplicated Meta Descriptions

Just like in the case of Page Titles, in order for Meta Descriptions to work to your advantage, they have to be specified in the first place. In cases when the Meta Description is missing, the search engines are likely to pull a snippet of text from the page at hand. Although these snippets may sometimes be fit for purpose, it is unlikely for them to be better than a purposefully written one.

A Meta Description is considered unique when it is individual to a Landing Page. The practice of automatically generating pages may lead to duplication as a commonly resulting issue. Although the duplication of Meta Descriptions is not as severe as the duplication of Page Titles, this may negatively affect the click-through rate.

Duplicated meta descriptions based on pagination

An additional step to the implementation of pagination may sometimes come in the form of modifying the page’s Meta Description of any pages following the root page (page 1) in a manner that makes clear that these web pages are part of a sequence.

In other words, simply adding the total number of items the full sequence of pages has along with the number of items represented on the page at hand can go a long way in extending users’ expectations about the page’s content. Like in the case of Page Titles, the word from the Search Engines representatives is that they qualify this practice as an overkill. However, this can give a better context to users arriving at any other paginated pages than the root page (page 1), in the rare cases when it does happen.

Optimising Social Media Description Tags

The Open Graph Tag

Social Media meta tags allow for alternative titles and descriptions to be used along with other additional features. In order to take full advantage of social media posts, one can use these tags to optimise a landing page in order to increase the engagement coming from social media channels. The most important social tag is called Open Graph which specifies the title, type of post, URL, accompanying image, description, name of the website and optionally the price amount and currency (for product pages). The reason for it being the most important social tag is that all social media platforms including Facebook, Twitter and Linkedin can use it.

<head>
<!-- Open Graph data -->
<meta property="og:title" content="Title Here" />
<meta property="og:type" content="article" />
<meta property="og:url" content="https://nurdic.com/" />
<meta property="og:image" content="https://nurdic.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/AIDAnew.png" />
<meta property="og:description" content="Description Here" /> 
<meta property="og:site_name" content="Site Name, i.e. Moz" />
<meta property="og:price:amount" content="15.00" />
<meta property="og:price:currency" content="USD" />
</head>

The title and description lengths of Open Graph tags vary from platform to platform and even more so between their desktop and mobile versions. Titles and descriptions can be as long as 95 and 200 characters, respectively and still display fully on some platforms.

However, in order for them to display fully on all platforms and devices, a general recommendation would be to keep them both under 55 characters. Open Graph images are used only on social posts and are not required to be present on the landing page itself. Although every social network has different standards for sizing Open Graph images, 1200px * 630px would be the most suitable option, as these are the dimensions recommended by Facebook. Apart from images, Facebook also allows for product prices to be featured within posts for product landing pages, creating a more integral expectation about the product.

The Twitter Card Tag

A more extensive option for social meta tags, specifically for websites that target Twitter as their social network of choice may also include Twitter card data. Twitter cards override the page titles, descriptions and images set through Open Graph, in addition to including a publisher name and creator handles in order to present the landing page on Twitter in the optimal format.

<head>
<!-- Twitter Card data -->
<meta name="twitter:card" content="summary_large_image">
<meta name="twitter:site" content="@publisher_handle">
<meta name="twitter:title" content="Page Title">
<meta name="twitter:description" content="Page description less than 200 characters">
<meta name="twitter:creator" content="@author_handle">
<meta name="twitter:image:src" content="https://nurdic.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/AIDAnew.png">
</head>

Twitter recommends title lengths to be within 70 characters and description lengths within 200 characters. Similarly, Twitter supports only JPG, PNG, WEBP and GIF formats and requires the images to be within the image sizes have to be lower than 5Mb.

Changing Meta Descriptions in WordPress

Now that you’ve understood all the aspects of writing successful Meta Descriptions, what you’d likely want to do next is actually be able to write them or change them directly in WordPress.