[Tutorial] How to increase your SEO traffic with your Meta Description

by m30jake

Posted: 11 years ago 8 replies

[Tutorial] How to increase your SEO traffic with your Meta Description

I don't see much discussion on meta descriptions as a way to increase your traffic. You might have keyword stuffed them but do they attract attention?

1. Have a look at the Search Queries section in Webmaster Tools

Go to your Google Webmaster Tools and if you haven't already add and verify your website. Now on your dashboard have a look at the Search Queries section.

2. Find out your CTR in Google SERPS

Open up a Google Spreadsheet or Excel (whatever your prefer) and input the data as in the below image:

To find your Click Through Rate (what percentage of people who saw your website in the search results actually clicked on it), you have to divide the amount of clicks by the amount of impressions

Here we can see a CTR of 8.28%.

3. How to Increase your CTR

The easiest way to increase your CTR in SERPS (Search Engine Result PageS) is to modify your meta descriptions of your pages.

This is the HTML markup that goes between the <head> tags:

First of all, have a look at the pages of your website that get the most traffic by opening Google Analytics. Go to Behaviour -> Content. The pages with the most unique views are the pages we should focus on first.

Search in Google to see how they are appearing on SERPS currently, for example the following:

There are a lot of good examples here, not only are all the meta descriptions personalised (it's not just up to Google to take a part of your text), but they are also very relevant to the search query and <title> tag.

Furthermore they contain call to actions to as the user to visit their site and visit other pages on their site. For example:

Try out
Take a look
Search

Other call to actions you could use are:

Sign up now for (if your aim is to get emails)
Search our database of
It's free

Not only do we want to increase our CTR from SERP -> your landing page, but we also want to tell the user what to do when they land on your site.

For example if you have a website that makes money from Adsense, we can ask the user to search our fitness articles, or if you are building a list, add on to the end of your description Sign up to our newsletter for FREE!.

4. How long should the meta description be?

The meta description gets cut off at 160 characters, and less on SERPS on mobile devices. I advise you to create a subscription between 100-130 characters.

5. Keep measuring
Meta descriptions are largely overlooked. Keep updating your Spreadsheet every week and see if your CTR is increasing or decreasing and don't be scared to try something new to persuade people to visit your website.

If you liked the tutorial please give a thanks and leave a comment! :-)

#description #increase #meta #seo #traffic #tutorial

yukon Banned 11 years ago

The problem is your failing to deliver SERP descriptions based on search queries because your using a meta description tag.

Removing a meta description tag forces Google to pull text from the ranked webpage.

Instead of a single hard coded meta description being used on the SERP description, you could have 10 (example) highly optimized SERP descriptions per each page.

Example, a single ranked page with multiple SERP description depending on the search query:

If I'm searching for how to build a shed foundation I would see this:

If I'm searching for how to build a shed wall I would see this:

If I'm searching for how to build a shed roof I would see this:
- Thanks
- 1 reply
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- m30jake 11 years ago
  
  However your title tags are the same, I'd include these keywords in your description How to build an x y or z ... and then have a really good CTA at the end
  
  Thanks
  
  1 reply
  
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  yukon Banned 11 years ago
  
  Originally Posted by m30jake
  
  However your title tags are the same
  
  Not always true.
  
  I can consistently get Google to create multiple unique SERP titles per individual ranked page, again depending on the search query.
  
  Thanks
  
  1 reply
  
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  DABK 11 years ago
  
  When you are found for the keyword you optimized your meta for, you will increase CTR. If you're found by some other keyword, you will decrease it.
  
  Conclusion, test. Odds are good, though, that you are found more often via other keywords, not the one you optimized for.... variations, you know. Like Yukon said.
  
  Thanks
  
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yukon Banned 11 years ago

Another reason to avoid meta description tags is, optimizing the SERP description with jump links.

With a hard coded meta description your basically working against Google when it comes to jump links in the SERP description.

Example: english billiard table
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- wedreamseo Banned 11 years ago
  
  I analyzed some well performing paid campaigns and decided to use the best converting one as my meta description.
  
  As a result of that my rankings actually dropped, I suspect the CTR has lowered overall for the reasons that Yukon explained.
  
  Thanks
  
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karishmasingla 11 years ago

According to me Meta description is use less thing. Focus main keyword in Title, H1 tag and in Content.

You definitely get rankings for your keywords.
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shahriar10 11 years ago

This method is really workful
- Thanks
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