Meta Description
What is a Meta Description?
Why is Meta Description Important?
1. Rank Higher
While meta descriptions do not count in Google’s algorithm for search results rankings, it is important for users to know what they expect when they land on your page. This is why a good meta description is critical since it gives you a chance to “sell” your web page so that a user clicks on the link, which ultimately does influence the rankings
2. Branding
Best Practices to Create Meta Description?
1. Keyword
The meta description should contain the keywords that the web page is targeting but without being spam-like or unintelligent. It is important to have a unique meta description for every web page on your website
It is also useful in getting the attention of the user as the keyword for which the user searches, get highlighted if it is contained in the meta description. Just as your keyword should be a part of your title, it is important also to make it a part of your meta description.
2. Characters Limit
Don’t overstuff your meta description with the primary keyword. Not only does this look unnatural, but it also results in bad user experience.
4. Unique
HTML Code of Title Tag?
The HTML code for a meta description is as shown below
<head>
<meta name="description" content="This is the content for meta description of the web page that is shown in search engine results.">
</head>
Things To Keep In Mind?
- The meta description tag always goes under the head tag in your HTML document
- Even if you define upfront what the meta description of your web page is the search engine may not display it the same way as your copy.
- You can tag information in a meta description to clearly define, says the author of a book, date of publication and byline content.
For example, <meta name = “Description” content = “Author: Stephen King, Publication Date: October 1992, Price: INR 499”>
Such information, that is separated into distinct labels is a great way to include structured data about a web page. You can check for the meta description related issues here
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