What does a meta description look like?
Meta tags, such as meta title or description, are HTML elements that are defined in the header section of the page marked with the <head> </head> tag. The description in SERP is visible under the page title and looks like this:
description of the page in Google search results
description of the page in Google search results
HTML code:
<meta name="description" content="Meta description content" />
A long time ago, in December 2007, Google officially announced through Google Search Central that meta description has no impact on a page's position in search results. In 2009, it was also announced that meta keywords are treated similarly.
The meta description is no longer considered a ranking factor, but Google itself encourages focusing on this element in order to improve the quality of the displayed result in the list and influence user choices.
"While using a meta description tag is optional and will have no impact on your rankings, a good description can result in a better snippet, which in turn can help improve the quality and quantity of visitors from our search results."
John Mueller
Why is it worth setting a meta description?
Although the meta description is not a ranking factor and has no direct impact on the position of a given page, an appropriate meta description can improve the results achieved by the website in several ways. In this case, the behavioral factor is important. We can treat the page description as a short advertising slogan, which is intended to catch the eye db to data for trusted database source company of a potential customer and influence their decision.
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Encouragement to visit the website
The list of search results consists of a small number of elements: navigation path, title, description and possibly extended elements. Having the ability to set your own meta title and description displayed in SERP, we should make the most of their potential and properly encourage users to read the content of the page.
A well-developed description should describe the content of the page as precisely as possible and make users recognize it as the best answer to their query. A description generated automatically by Google may result in a lack of interest from a potential customer, because they will not find in it any sign indicating that the content of the page contains what they were looking for.
the lack of content on the page and the set description resulted in the generation of an unattractive description
the lack of content on the page and the set description resulted in the generation of an unattractive description
Influence on position
Setting a good meta description has an impact on, among other things, increasing the CTR ( click through rate), which in turn is important in the context of our place in the SERPs. A higher click-through rate means that we give Google robots a clear signal about the good matching of our page's content to the query.
Data about the user experience on a given page is so powerful that it can move up the rankings. Maintaining a high-quality meta description on your page is a chance to jump in search results, even though the description itself has no direct impact on this element.
More control
By preparing our own description, we are sure that we have done everything in our power to attract the user's attention at the stage of displaying the list of results. In some cases, despite setting the meta description, Google may display a different description taken from the content of the page, but then we have no influence on this. By resigning from setting meta descriptions, we agree to decide for us on a very important issue, which is the presentation of the page against the competition, which may negatively affect organic traffic.
Where should I set the description first?
If we are dealing with a small website, creating unique meta descriptions for each of the subpages will not be a big problem. Complications arise when our website is very extensive and creating a meta description for each subpage would be too time-consuming a task. In such a situation, at the beginning we should focus on several types of pages operating within the service.
