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Why Meta Description is So Important
A guest post from Chris “Kip” Carrier of Kip FX Design
This morning when I was checking my G+ (I love Google Plus), a friend {Nikki’s note: ahem, it was me, having been lazy…} had shared one of her blogs, yet the snippet was displaying all of her follow info, and not an excerpt of the actual blog entry, this is something that needs to be avoided, as the first few lines of the blog/page need to tease people, make them click through to the main page.
There are a few ways of doing this, a lot of the time, your blog theme will automatically use the first few lines of the article, this blog will explain how to ensure you are displaying the right teasers, both in search engine results and with social media link sharing (Facebook, Google + etc).
Search Engine – Meta Description
This is extremely important, writing a good meta description is one of the most important parts of any blog or web page, and we are not just talking SEO here, but as a CTA (Call to Action), below is a picture of how I write a meta description for clients, but more importantly, how it displays in Google.
As you can see, I have dropped in some relevant keywords, kept it short and sweet, and added a CTA with the number to call. When you have spent time and money in making sure your website appears on the front page of Google, you do not want to lose out on traffic and clients because your competitors have meta descriptions that entice people to their sites, and you have a bunch of random keywords that make no sense.
Social Media – Meta Description
There is no real difference when sharing on social networks, the same rules apply, but you want people to share this, tell their friends, tweet it, FB it, G+ it, so it has to be right. Below is an image of how the same page that showed up in Google, displays when shared on Facebook, starting to see a pattern yet?
The reason it is so important on Social Networks is because of the shareability (did I just invent a new word?), like, comment and share are underneath this link, so the better the meta description, the more chance of it getting a wider coverage.
Meta Description – How To:
- Keep it under 160 characters.
- It has to have relevant keywords.
- Do not keyword stuff (too many keywords, bad move).
- It has to make sense.
- Tease your viewers.
- Add a CTA at the end (only seen if kept under 160 characters).
- CTA: Call Now 01234 567 8910 (good for trades etc)
- CTA: Read More, Click Now (good for blogs or info sites)
- CTA: Buy Now, Check Stock (Good for eShops)
Chris “Kip” Carrier is a web & graphic designer, primarily WordPress, with a passion for Social Media Marketing and iMacs. You can find him at Kip FX Design 
About Nikki
This is really interesting because a lot of marketers say that meta description tags no longer matter that much in search engines anymore. But now you’ve proven to them that age-old technique hasn’t really died yet–and it still works wonders.
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I think what most people mean when they say META tags aren’t important anymore is the keywords tag – while it is true that Google don’t take the keywords tag into consideration anymore, other search engines do, and let’s face it, we know how Google likes to change its mind
The description tag is important becaus eit’s what will show (in most cases) in your listing, and encourages people to click on you and not your competitor
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Just in case you need a current status of your meta descriptions … try http://meta-description-crawler.cmm-hq.com Our free webservice crawls the meta descriptions of your entire site or just a page.
Thanks – a nice tool