Meta description tags can have a great effect on your company. Despite having no impact on rankings directly, they benefit you in a wider marketing context.  Meta descriptions will be the first piece of information that an online searcher will see when they search for something that your business has to offer, and when you are competing with thousands of other companies for attention. They are effectively acting as an advert for your company, and should be approached with the appropriate level of importance.

The main function of a meta description tag is to inform your customers of what your company is offering, in a concise yet compelling way. The description for each page on your site should be unique. It can have an optimum length of 160 characters, but if the tag exceeds this number, it will get cut off, and replaced instead with a ‘…’. Therefore, it is important to get the most important information at the beginning of the description, else it will not be picked up by the search engine. Your keywords should be in your meta descriptions, too, as although the tag has no effect on your ranking, Google will pick up on your keywords and bold them, increasing visibility and clickthrough rate for your site.

Meta description tags are critical to attracting relevant traffic to your site. The title tag, which accompanies the description tag, cannot always effectively communicate what your company does, as its main purpose is different to that of the meta description. The title tag needs to include all of the keywords targeted on that page, within just 65 characters, so this means that there is little room for any type of company description. This is why the description tag is so important. The intent of a searcher can sometimes be unclear, or different searchers might have different motivations, so it is down to the description tag to inform them of the company, and consequently lower the bounce rate of the site.

Although not a concrete rule, it will always help if you are honest about your company when promoting it, as this will assist you with getting your customers to trust you further down the line. It will also encourage positive brand recognition. If by being honest you feel that you are lacking in excitement, think of creative ways to communicate what it is that you are offering, and always include a call-to-action phrase at the end of your description to encourage people to click on it.

Meta description tags are one of the key factors that you should consider for effective SEO. If you want advice on writing effective meta tags, contact SEO Consult, and we can help you to write the meta tags for your business in the best way possible.

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