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What are meta descriptions & do they still matter?

by smaddoxjr
17 replies
  • SEO
    • |
Hello,

Hope all is great this weekend. I was just remembering when I first heard about "SEO".
Meaning search engine optimization, right? Does it stop their? Then I recalled learning the difference between organic vs: paid results. Now I'm wandering if the meta descriptions that describe the page your searching for . Does this still really matter?
#descriptions #matter #meta
  • Profile picture of the author Fary
    Yes. Title and Description tags are still very important. Meta keywords are not that important as they were in the past.
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    • Profile picture of the author GarrettMickley
      Originally Posted by Fary View Post

      Yes. Title and Description tags are still very important. Meta keywords are not that important as they were in the past.
      Second this.

      Also, while meta keywords may not be near as important, I still put them in there just in case. It takes such a small amount of extra time that I see no reason not to throw 3-5 meta keywords in there.
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  • Profile picture of the author SEOCrate
    Meta descriptions don't directly benefit your search engine rankings. However, they can indirectly improve your rankings.

    Their purpose is to increase click-through's to your website from search results. Therefore, having a higher click-through rate with a low bounce rate will directly improve your search engine rankings.

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    • Profile picture of the author smaddoxjr
      I must say, very insightful response. This would only work with an organic search. The percentage of clicks consistently drops off as you go further down the page, because a more relevant result is, logically, usually at the top of SERPs. Thank you. I will be looking into the article now.




      Originally Posted by SEOCrate View Post

      Meta descriptions don't directly benefit your search engine rankings. However, they can indirectly improve your rankings.

      Their purpose is to increase click-through's to your website from search results. Therefore, having a higher click-through rate with a low bounce rate will directly improve your search engine rankings.

      We wrote a pretty in-depth article on this exact subject. You can check it out for a more descriptive answer.

      Here it is: https://seocrate.com/seo-articles/meta-description/
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      Scott Maddox Jr

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  • Profile picture of the author Brandboyz
    Banned
    Meta description should be from 100 to 160 characters length. However up to 200 characters can be considered as correct.
    Use all characters to describe your page using most important keyword.
    Each page should have it’s own, unique description.
    Meta description usually shows in search engine results as a description of page and it should encourage to visit your site.
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  • Profile picture of the author IMCapitalist
    I've somewhere before, it is not as important as it used to be in the past too. Meta time is almost over,
    not over yet though.
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  • Profile picture of the author reddy183
    Hi,

    Meta descriptions will improve your CTR's, because we need to describe about our pages in these meta descriptions.

    Regards,
    Reddy Sekhar.
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    • Profile picture of the author AMJAlienServers
      Originally Posted by reddy183 View Post

      Hi,

      Meta descriptions will improve your CTR's, because we need to describe about our pages in these meta descriptions.

      Regards,
      Reddy Sekhar.
      Nice plain and simple answer.
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  • Profile picture of the author powerofschool
    Ofcourse Title and Description is still important for Google.

    PFB link for the reference from Google.

    https://support.google.com/webmaster...er/35624?hl=en
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  • Profile picture of the author IMLab
    Originally Posted by smaddoxjr View Post

    Hello,

    Hope all is great this weekend. I was just remembering when I first heard about "SEO".
    Meaning search engine optimization, right? Does it stop their? Then I recalled learning the difference between organic vs: paid results. Now I'm wandering if the meta descriptions that describe the page your searching for . Does this still really matter?
    Meta descriptions are still important for your visitors when spotting your website in search engines. A good description increases your click through rate. It is also good to mention that search engines are still taking it into consideration when ranking your website.
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  • Profile picture of the author jkgultimate
    Target keywords in Title and On-Page SEO with back links helps rankings

    Meta description does NOTHING for rankings, but does a lot for Click Through Rate. For example, if you have two sites ranking one on top of the other for the same keywords, the one with the better meta description will get more visitors.
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    • Profile picture of the author smaddoxjr
      I must say I agree.


      Originally Posted by jkgultimate View Post

      Target keywords in Title and On-Page SEO with back links helps rankings

      Meta description does NOTHING for rankings, but does a lot for Click Through Rate. For example, if you have two sites ranking one on top of the other for the same keywords, the one with the better meta description will get more visitors.
      Signature

      Scott Maddox Jr

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  • Profile picture of the author aadi14
    Meta Description still matter but the way of looking at its benefit is now changed. Once Meta Tags( title, description, keywords) all are important. But now, it won't affect your rankings if you don't have keywords placed.

    The main purpose is now shifted to increasing the CTR. The more attractive your meta is the more are chances you get a high CTR. After this, it all depends on your landing page. So make your landing page good enough if you want to convert the visitors into customers.
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  • Profile picture of the author yukon
    Banned
    The meta description tag severely limits a ranked webpage SERP description.

    If Google doesn't find a meta description tag in the webpage HTML source code Google will automatically pull text from the page that's relevant to the search query.

    Not having a meta description tag allows you to customize multiple SERP descriptions per each webpage based on the keyword phrases your optimizing the page for, which in turn helps boost SERP CTR because traffic finds the keyword phrase they searched for.
    • A static meta description/SERP description gives you one chance at promoting a single keyword phrase.
    • A dynamic SERP description (no HTML meta description tag) allows as many custom SERP descriptions as you want (per page).
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  • Profile picture of the author kavyaanjali
    Meta descriptions are HTML attributes that provide concise explanations of the contents of web pages. Meta descriptions are commonly used on search engine result pages (SERPs) to display preview snippets for a given page.
    Yes, they still matter because its purpose is to describe the contents of the page to the searcher.
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    • Profile picture of the author nettiapina
      Originally Posted by kavyaanjali View Post

      Meta descriptions are HTML attributes
      Yes, we can see that you can cut and paste from the Moz. Most of your comments seem to be like this.

      Can you please stop digging up old threads to post useless, stale copypasta to them?
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      Links in signature will not help your SEO. Not on this site, and not on any other forum.
      Who told me this? An ex Google web spam engineer.

      What's your excuse?
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  • Profile picture of the author crocodino
    Yes meta description still matters as they are used to describe the content of the webpage. Meta description helps to improve the CTR.
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