Meta Description is an attribute within your meta tags that you can use to describe your page. It is this piece of text that can appear in Internet search results under the name of your site. Sometimes, though, search engines like Google retrieve a snippet of text from the main copy of the page instead.
You can find meta descriptions on any web page. To do this, you just need to right-click on the page and select “view source” or “view page source”.
This information has several purposes. One of them is to be a part of the text in the search results. This happens when search engines run a search query that your page is ranking for. The Meta Description should give search engine crawlers a short description of what they might find if they go to your site.
Previously, the allowed length for meta descriptions could be no more than 160 characters. Since 2017, Google has updated its rules, thereby expanding the standard meta description size. Now up to 275 characters will be displayed in search results.
What you need to know to write a great meta description:
- Use researched, targeted keywords in your meta descriptions.
- Make sure the meta description matches the content on every page
- Don’t use the same meta description for the entire site
- Communicate benefits and urgency.
- Compel users to click to show them value and appeal to emotion.
