If you do not add a meta-description to your site, you will miss a great opportunity to attract and transform new visitors. This may not seem like a big deal, but targeted clips that appear in search engine results can have a huge impact. If not, you may lose the number of clicks.
Meta descriptions are short snippets that appear on search results pages such as Google and Bing. You can customize them to better describe each page, attract new users, and make your search results stand out from competing sites.
Adding a meta description is as simple as filling in a box or inserting a line of code.
Are you ready to get more hits? We will show you how to add meta descriptions to WordPress with and without plug-ins.
- What is a meta-description?
- Meta description of how to affect your SEO
- Meta-description and meta-keywords
- Five techniques for writing and optimizing meta-descriptions in WordPress
- Write a meta description for a specific page
- How to add a meta description using Yoast SEO
- How to add a meta description without a plugin
What is a meta-description?
Search engines like Google use a robot called a web crawler to index your site. This provides them with information that allows them to display correctly in search results, so they can find you when people search for relevant keywords.
But since this program is just a program, it doesn’t automatically know what your site is about. You must tell it with different elements, such as site maps, schema tags, and meta tags, to name just a few. This is why meta-description is so important.
Meta description example
The user will see the meta-description of the page under the title of the search results. The meta-description is designed to inform them of the content and purpose of the page so that they can decide whether to click on it or not. In this example, you can also see additional links:
Example of additional links
Google’s crawler is better than ever. In fact, they can now automatically extract the title and meta-description and find out the theme of the page without having to manually define keywords.
If you don’t write your own meta-description, Google will generate one for you by extracting content from the page. But you may miss the opportunity to convince people to click on a link with custom target code snippets to win the conversion.
Meta description of how to affect your SEO
Meta-descriptions actually have no direct impact on your SEO rankings, but Google still recommends creating a unique description for each page on your site. Keywords that are naturally found in your content are important to SEO.
Meta-descriptions can affect the click-through rate (CTR), or how many people decide to click on your site.
Think about what you searched for last time on Google. What made you choose a link? Maybe the title, description, or both convinced you.
Meta-description has a positive impact on click-through rate (photo source: Backlinko.com)
:
“writing a unique meta-description for each page can increase the natural click-through rate of your site. We found that the click-through rate of pages with meta-descriptions was 5.8% higher than those without description. “
Search engines may automatically generate a fragment, but if the description doesn’t convey what your content is, people will ignore it and choose another site.
Writing your own meta-description ensures that you have more control over what people see.
I said “more control”, not “full control”. However, Google will not always use your meta-description.
Sometimes it displays parts of the page that are more relevant to the user’s search. In most cases, however, it prefers to fall back to the code snippet you provide rather than use the automatically generated code snippet.
Well-written meta-descriptions play an important role in attracting and transforming visitors. It may not directly affect SEO, but it will bring you more interested visitors, and higher click-through rates will indeed improve your ranking.
Meta-description and meta-keywords
Metadata as a whole is a set of HTML tags that tell search engines and web crawlers what your site is about. This includes the title, description, and keywords.
You already know that meta-descriptions are HTML elements that describe the content and purpose of a web page.
Meta keywords are relics of the old Internet. In other words, they have been deprecated and no longer in use. In the past, they were used to tell search engines about the topics covered by pages, similar to how you tag social media or blog posts.
However, once people realize that you can enter any irrelevant keywords and get free traffic from topics that are not related to your site (Hello “Free Movie” and “Free mp3”), search engines will remove support for this feature. You can still add meta keywords, but for the most popular search engines, it doesn’t do anything.
Now, Google uses more sophisticated web crawlers to check the content of the site, which can automatically find topics related to what you write on the page. It completely ignores the meta-keyword attribute.
To improve SEO is not to use meta keywords, but to optimize the use of natural keywords in content and solve other technical problems, such as the speed of the site.
Five techniques for writing and optimizing meta-descriptions in WordPress
In terms of meta-description, there are no hard and fast rules to follow. But you should still keep some best practices in mind. These can help you stand out from the competition and increase the click-through rate.
Let’s review these best practices so that you can write better meta-descriptions.
1. Ideal fragment length
You can’t make your segment infinitely long. If it exceeds a certain number of characters, it will be truncated. Your meta-description can be as short as possible, but no more than 155-160 characters, otherwise it may be suddenly cut off. That doesn’t look good.
Another example of meta-description
two。 Focus on a keyword
It’s a good idea to include a keyword in every snippet you write. If you are creating a snippet for a blog article, you can locate the same keywords as your article. Otherwise, do some keyword research and select keywords that are consistent with your goals.
Including keywords will help you build your description in a compelling way. In addition, Google sometimes highlights keywords that match the user’s search terms. Locating a popular keyword and including it in your description may result in bold, compelling text.
Bold text when related to a query
3. Write a clear, coherent and fascinating description
Your meta-description is like a free ad, so think of it as an opportunity to transform potential visitors. Ask the reader questions directly, attract them by asking questions or questions, and then outline the benefits of clicking the link. Use vivid images, compelling statements, or informative sentences.
Most importantly, win your click by proving that your site is exactly what people are looking for. Do you have the best service or product, or the information they’ve been looking for? What do you have to offer that your competitors don’t offer?
Make sure your clips are of high quality and free from awkward wording, repetition, or grammatical errors that can be prohibitive.
Consider adding rhetorical terms such as “save money”, “read our comments” or “learn more about meta tags”. However, avoid using CTA that sounds awkward, such as “Click here”. Many websites choose to skip the rhetoric and focus on providing valuable information; see what sounds to you.
Make your meta description attractive
Finally, be clear about what happens when you click on the link. Will they read blog posts, browse the store or log on to the feature page? It should be obvious where they are going and what they will find when they get there.
4. Avoid repetitive clips
Meta-descriptions provide a free opportunity to reach out to potential customers and convert them, so don’t waste it creating duplicate or CC clips, where meta-descriptions are the same or almost the same across multiple web pages.
When you have hundreds or thousands of pages on your site, it seems like a good idea to use templates and exchange details. But repetitive descriptions don’t look good, especially if they cover more than a few pages. People will quickly adjust the results of your site.
The default meta-description is better than a bad description. If you don’t have time to add well-written, compelling code snippets for each page, it’s best to let Google get the job done and focus on a few key pages.
5. Don’t cheat.
Meta-descriptions may not improve your SEO, but if you deliberately engage in deceptive behavior, they will certainly damage your click-through rate.
Make sure your description is accurate. Be honest with what people click on first. Don’t lie about what the page contains.
Avoid keyword filling. It is awkward to read and can lead to lower click-through rates, and it may punish you or cause Google to ignore your custom description altogether.
With these tips in mind, you will create a better meta-description.
Write a meta description for a specific page
The techniques for making meta-descriptions are similar in nature, but each type of page needs its own special style. The way you write code snippets for blog posts, home pages, and product pages is very different.
Here are some tips for writing meta-descriptions for some key types of pages.
Home page meta description
The description of the home page gets special treatment. This is the face of your website, so you must pay attention to it. Many websites only write a short sentence and never even reach the 160-character limit.
WordPress.com meta description
Your job here is to sell your brand. Use a short, lively, well-written article to briefly explain your job and why they chose you. This applies to pages similar to your About and Mission Statement.
Meta-description of blog posts
For major information pages, such as blog posts, you may not want your description to read like a blatant advertisement. Of course, you are conducting publicity, which can include rhetorical terms, but pay attention to the information.
When people look for a solution to a problem, they don’t want to be publicized. They want answers. Tell people what they will learn when they click on this link and prove that you know what you are talking about.
Meta-description of blog posts
Category page meta description
You also need to consider the category page. This is a very difficult to write. Category archives do not appear in most searches, but you should not miss the opportunity to create compelling conversion clips.
The best way is to attract people by reminding them of the types of posts they will find in this category and get them in the mood to read.
Meta description of the category page
Category pages play a key role for news-based sites and e-commerce stores because, if properly optimized, they can become key pages that can achieve higher rankings and more traffic.
Product page meta description
Speaking of online stores. When people want to buy something quickly, the product page appears in the search results.
Instead of promoting your site, focus on a single product. Use a similar strategy: write something to quickly explain what it is and why they need it.
You may also include specifications such as price and other product information.
Meta description of the product page
Ideally, you should write a unique meta-description for each product. It may be tempting to use only the template and change the product name, but this general approach is not as effective as handwritten publicity.
How to add a meta description using Yoast SEO
If you want to add a custom meta-description to your site, the best option is to install the SEO plug-in. Any popular SEO plug-in makes it easy to write code snippets for all pages and blog posts.
Although you can add them manually, this means editing the site file. In some settings, this may not be possible without FTP access, which makes things more complicated. In addition, without a plug-in, there is no easy way to add a separate description for each page. All the simplest solutions only set a default code snippet for the entire site.
For most people, it’s best to install only one WordPress plug-in instead of dealing with headaches.
You can use simple and straightforward plug-ins, such as WP Meta SEO or a more full-featured SEO suite. Some popular SEO plug-ins include Yoast SEO and The SEO Framework. Since Yoast is the most widely used, we will show you how to add a meta-description.
Now let’s install Yoast. You can visit its plug-in library page or log in to your WordPress backend and go to Plugins & gt; Add New. Search for Yoast and download it, or upload your previously installed zip file.
Install the Yoast SEO plug-in
Then you just need to enable the plug-in in the plug-in & gt; installation plug-in to make it work.
Use Yoast SEO to add meta descriptions to articles and pages
Yoast will add a new SEO tab to your administrative backend. You can configure settings here, including the default settings and how your page looks on social media. But to use a single meta-description editor, you need to open an existing post or page or create a new one.
Scroll down the edit area and you will see the new Yoast section. Click Edit Snippet and start typing in the Meta Description section. When the optimal character length is reached, the bar at the bottom turns green. You can also add dynamic variables that will display elements such as titles or categories.
How to add a meta description to Yoast SEO
This is all you need to do to create a custom meta-description for any post or page on your site.
Use Yoast SEO to add a meta description to your home page
Adding snippets to your home page in Yoast works a little differently than normal. Go to SEO & gt; Search Appearance.
There you will see the Homepage section with the normal editor UI. Just write a description and title as before.
Settings for Yoast SEO
Keep in mind that writing home page snippets is a sales pitch for the entire site. Describe your company or blog, what you do, what you must provide. When you are finished, click Save Changes.
In this way, your home page search results should soon be updated to show its new meta-description.
Use Yoast SEO to add a default meta-description
What if you want to add a default meta-description that appears when you fail to set a custom meta-description? It’s easy. Under SEO & gt; Search Appearance & gt; Content Types (check the tab at the top of the “Search Appearance” page), you will see two drop-down lists, one for articles and one for pages.
Add default meta-description
These also use a typical metadata editor, so continue to add default snippets to articles and pages.
Now, when you create a new article or page, the meta description automatically uses the information you enter here. This way, if you post a blog post and forget to add a snippet, it will return to the content you placed here.
If you prefer to base on a template, you can also paste it here, and it will appear on the editing screen so that you can fill in when you post a new article.
Use Yoast SEO to add a meta description to a category file
Where is your category page? These small files don’t have much text content, which can confuse Google and cause them to display corrupted or strange-looking fragments. You can add a short excerpt yourself to avoid this situation.
Go to SEO & gt; Search Appearance & gt; Taxonomies and create your description in the editor. Or you can go to Posts & gt; Categories and write a new one for each individual category archive page.
Meta-description example for a category page
This clip doesn’t need to be too complicated. You can still put forward small advertisements such as “find dozens of articles here”, but you don’t need to be so strict, because this page is unlikely to pop up frequently in search results.
This contains all the information you need to know about adding meta-descriptions using Yoast.
How to add a meta description without a plugin
If you do not want to install the SEO plug-in to create a custom meta-description, you can edit the theme file instead. However, this can be a bit troublesome, especially if you want to add a description to each page.
It may be easier for you to download the plug-in. However, if you really don’t want to do this, here’s how to do it manually.
Be sure to back up any files on your site before editing. It’s also a good idea to create a subtheme because it protects your site when you make a mistake and doesn’t reset your changes when WordPress updates.
We will create some generic meta tags that apply to every page on your site. First, you need to go to Settings & gt; General. Under Tagline, write down the meta description that you want to represent your website.
Edit your theme file to add a meta description
Next, go to Appearance & gt; Theme Editor. If you can’t see it, you may need to use FTP to access your header.php. Look at the sidebar and locate Theme Header (header.php) and click to edit it. Paste this code into the
Anywhere between and.
This adds a banner to every page on your site.
Obviously, this is not ideal for your blog posts. If people know the content of each post instead of getting a general description, you are more likely to get clicks.
Using this code, the search engine will get the content from the article as usual for use in the meta-description.
Through these two programs, you will get tailored descriptions on general pages such as the home page and category files, but your article will have a normal segment.
What if you want to add a separate description for each page? This tends to get more complex, and it's best to use only plug-ins. However, you can do this using conditional tags or custom fields.
Summary
If you don't have a targeted, accurately written meta-description, you may miss clicks and conversions. It is doomed to let Google generate fragments. By writing it yourself, you have the opportunity to "sell" and ensure that users can make fully informed decisions.
As research shows, custom meta-descriptions can increase your click-through rate to 5.8%, which is a good result considering that you may need very few resources to make them. In fact, to add a meta-description to WordPress, you can manually edit the WordPress file or use the SEO plug-in to control your fragments.
I know that customizing meta-descriptions may take more time than you expect, but this is a worthwhile activity for long-term results.
