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

by 8 replies
9



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?



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.






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

Here we can see a CTR of 8.28%.




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!.



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.


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! :-)
#search engine optimization #description #increase #meta #seo #traffic #tutorial
  • Banned
    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 I would see this:








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









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

    • [1] reply
    • 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
      • [1] reply
  • Banned
    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




    • [1] reply
    • Banned
      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.
  • 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.
  • This method is really workful
  • [DELETED]
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