Why do I need to write meta descriptions?

[DougRoberts]

Did the meta-description have the keywords in?

[matt-14567]

No, it didn't. Is that the only way Google will display the meta description? If so, that makes sense and clears up my confusion.

[ksracer]

Traffic is pretty quantifiable, but conversion perhaps less so. What good are strong SERP's if users aren't clicking through to your site and converting. Well written meta descriptions are an important part of the funnel, and what is the cost of creating them? Time?

[DougRoberts]

If your meta-description doesn't contain the search keywords then google may view a section of your page that does as more relevant and return that instead.

[BTeubner]

Tell your boss that the website's flux capacitor will get overloaded without a good meta description.

[ksracer]

Yep, with good meta descriptions traffic will hit 88mph in no time.

[Wales]

If you have a key generic keyword phase that describes the product but not the brand and is strong ($10 PPC), should these phrases be first?

Also, should my brand names be in Meta tags?

Note that I prefer responses from individuals familiar with Yahoo RTML. due to what I think is automatic meta tags.

[TimKelsey]

Has there been any research done on CTR for written descriptions vs. snippets grabbed by Google? Personally, I hardly ever look at meta descriptions when searching for something. My judgement is mostly based on the title tag.

Logically, it makes sense that a well-crafted description would be better, but I'd like to see some hard evidence to back that up.

[DougRoberts]

Here's an article I found about search snippets affecting click throughs. (In this case it was the presence of an article date that was causing a drop in CTR.)

Evidence of “SERP Snippet” Impact on Clickthrough Rates

And this article about boosting traffic by changing your snippets:

Easy Way To Boost Your Search Engine Traffic

I agree, that it would be to do some more testing of the impact of optimising the snippet for conversion.

[TimKelsey]

Cool! Thanks Doug!