SEO and Meta Descriptions: Top 5 Reasons Why You Should Use Them

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If you’re a digital marketing strategist, you want your website content to get results. You drill home the importance of SEO and keywords with your writing team for an important reason: You want your company’s website to rank as high as possible in Google.

But Google doesn’t care whether you add meta description tags or not.  As of 2009, they no longer factor into its search algorithm. So why should you bother with them? (Learn why Google does not use the keywords meta tag.)

What is a Meta Description Tag?

There are two ways to define a meta description tag: in writers’ language and in programmers’ language. 

• If you’re the writer, you need to know that meta descriptions provide a succinct summary of your content. Think of them as teaser text for your webpages. Each webpage on your site gets its own meta description.In Google search results, the meta descriptions are listed under your site title. They should be no longer than 155 characters – that includes spaces – so that Google doesn’t cut them off.
   
•  If you’re the programmer – or simply interested in code – the meta description is HTML code on the backend of your site, under the H1 title tag. It will look like this:
  
  

Backend code from Aha Media's website

How Aha Media's meta descriptions appears in Google's search results

Top 5 Reasons to Use Meta Descriptions

1.     They draw readers. People don’t want to waste time clicking through every Google result to find what they’re looking for. Meta descriptions help them scan their search results and quickly find the best webpage. If your meta descriptions are detailed and accurate, they will not only make your pages stand out, they may even add authority.

2.     They reduce your bounce rates. People leave websites quickly if they don’t contain the information they want. If your meta tags provide a spot-on description of your webpages, your readers will be happy and stay longer. That leads to more click-throughs and lower bounce rates.

3.     Google will fill one in, anyway. Google, Yahoo and Bing all show meta descriptions in their search results. If your webpages don’t have any, Google will scroll through your pages and pull one out. It may not be the best representation of your content. It’s better to be in control and write your own.

4.     Facebook uses them. If your webpages enable readers to share content, social networking platforms like Facebook and Google+ use the meta descriptions to auto-fill the description field with your post. Of course, users can always edit this text, but if your meta tags are great, many won’t. It’s another way to retain control over your content and branding, which leads us to . . .

5.     They provide yet another branding opportunity. Writing meta descriptions is another thing for your writers to worry about. But the payoff is there. And if you want your outstanding content to support and further your brand, meta descriptions are a no-brainer.

SEO Recipe for Success: Aha Media's popular SEO infographic

Use our handy SEO infographic to learn more about optimizing your pages:

• Download the full SEO Recipe for Success infographic.
• Download the printable PDF