Bad vs. Better meta descriptions – SEO best practices

Every brand that needs to be successful in the market has to undergo the best search engine optimization techniques, which is the most viable and cost-effective way to entice and reach your targeted customers.

There is no secret that when implementing SEO meta, descriptions are considered crucial to rank your web pages in search engines. But unfortunately, most of the marketers didn’t even know how to optimize their web page meta descriptions properly.

Knowing the basics of writing meta descriptions is vital for implementing effective SEO.

49% of marketers report that organic search has the best ROI of any marketing channel.

This article will familiarize you with meta-descriptions importance in organic SEO and the difference between better and bad meta descriptions.

Defining Meta Descriptions

A meta description is an HTML tag created to describe the content of a webpage. The meta description is a snippet of text that appears under your page URL in the search pages.

It provides an opportunity to entice search engine users about your website offerings and what they are looking for. The description clearly describes what your page is all about.

Meta descriptions help website users and search engine crawlers determine the quality of a web page and what type of content they can expect to find. As descriptions commonly appear in the SERPs (search engine results page), it directly impacts organic user click-through rates.

Meta descriptions do not affect your ranking in search engine results but indirectly impact SEO since they affect the overall user experience.

According to Research and Markets SEO Services Global Market Report, it was found that the global SEO services market is expected to reach $103.24 billion in 2025 at a compound annual growth rate of 20%.

Why does Meta Description matter?

Writing good meta descriptions for every page on your website is essential as it helps you drive clicks, traffic, conversions, and revenue. Writing the correct meta description can lead to more click rates.

Your meta-description should be user-friendly, keyword focuses and, boost your overall site traffic and increase the click-through rate. This is the first thing your visitors will see when scrolling through search engine results.

Here’s why meta description matters to your website.

Boost click-through rate in search engine pages

A properly written and optimized meta description will accelerate your click-through rate. A compelling meta description can boost your organic search results. This means more people who visit your page in the search results click through and land on your website, leading to more traffic and increased ranking.

Higher quality traffic

The higher your page rank in the search engine result pages, the more clicks you will get, which ultimately leads to high-quality traffic. Your web page will get hired rank in search engine pages and more traffic when writing good meta descriptions.

Lead to Potential conversions

Framing a good meta description directly related to your web page will entice your visitors. Meta descriptions are highly optimized for user intent as they can help businesses increase conversions while searching your site.

Best Practices to write Meta Descriptions

Here is a curated list of best practices to write good meta descriptions.

Keep the length short: 

A meta description length is restricted to just 160 characters. The ideal character count is between 140 and 160 characters. It permits users to view the search engine results pages (SERPs) without scrolling. Keep the length of the meta tag short.

Use targeted keywords

Meta descriptions allow search engines to understand what your web page is all about. It should be well written to rank your page higher in search pages. Make sure you perform keyword research. After that, optimize your meta descriptions with keywords.

No similar meta descriptions

Avoid duplicate meta descriptions on your website. No two web pages have the same meta descriptions, and it will confuse and misguide the search engines. Check your web page to keep each description unique and avoid duplication.

Add Call to Action

Writing meta descriptions is considered the call to action (CTA). Add an exciting, precise, and clear CTA that will increase your rankings within search engines. It motivates visitors to take some action and click on your webpage.

Where to define good Meta Descriptions?

Meta descriptions are always crucial when ranking a website, and even if they do not raise your ranking, they still improve your click-through rates. But for this, you need to understand how to place it right on what page and, of course, optimize it in the best way.

Homepage

Your homepage is one of the most important web pages where your users first land on your website, so in that case, it must have a good meta description.

The homepage contains crucial information, including services, CTAs, design elements, and service keywords. To rank the website, you must place good meta descriptions on the homepage, and if there is less page text, it needs a meta description.

Your homepage meta description highlights your company services and offering directly on the search engine pages.

Product Pages or Service-based Pages

Service-based pages or product pages help your businesses boost sales and will cater to your customers later and generate inquiries. These are the most crucial pages that need a good meta description.

The Content about to showcase on Google

Enhancing the meta description for old content that is not ranking will not improve your traffic or website. Make sure you improve the quality of meta description to those content showing the google. Enhancing the quality of descriptions for pages that have significant impression volume.

Easily search pages but Lack good text content

Many webpages that incorporate embedded videos, infographics, widgets, and apps lack descriptive text for Google to use for the description.

The same happens with resource pages and other pages that are a set of links. Similarly, for resources pages and other pages, which are just a list of links, 

In such cases, a website must provide a meta description for search engines.

You should understand that the less text displayed on a page, the more critical the meta description is.
According to a study by Ahrefs, nearly 91% of pages receive no traffic from Google.

Difference between bad and better Meta Description

Here listed a clear and precise difference between bad and better descriptions. Have a look at them and understand how meta descriptions have to be written

Bad Meta Description

1. When the content is wrongly written in the meta description. Here content includes keywords in pieces, and no complete information is given about the service. For instance,<meta name=”description” content=”product development, design, testing, marketing, launch”>
2. Bad Meta Description uses the same description for every article or web page.
3. Bad Meta Descriptions are unreliable and confusing.
4. Bad Meta Description doesn’t explain the complete page. For instance,<meta name=”description” content=”app developers invest a lot of time in the design and development of android apps.”>
5. The length of content is too short in Bad Meta Description.  For instance,<meta name=”description” content=”minimum viable product”>

Better Meta Description

1. When the right content is written in the meta description, the content includes complete information about the service or the company. For instance,<meta name=”description” content=”You will get everything from product design and development to product marketing and launch.”>
2. Better Meta description is all about using a snippet of description from a specific news article or a web page.
3. Better Meta descriptions are accurate, understandable, and intriguing.
4. A Better Meta description explains the whole page. For instance,<meta name=”description” content=”Guide to android app development and cost. An entrepreneur’s guide.”>
5. The length of content is detailed and specific in Bad Meta Description.  For instance,<meta name=”description” content=”minimum viable product or MVP is a product development technique in which a new product is developed with minimal features to fulfill requirements of early users”>

In a Nutshell

When it comes to on-page SEO, there are numerous practices and rules to follow to make your website rank in search engines and get immense traffic for the website.

You have to invest your time and optimized efforts and increase your rankings. And writing a compelling meta description is a bonus to your website SEO. It has the power to accelerate the click-through rate of your organic search results, and you will get more traffic even if your ranking remains the same.

For more such services, Connect with GTECH.