What is better for Meta description ??

[roeesa]

Hi everybody,

I noticed that a lot of websites prefer their meta description would be the first words of the content inside.
I on the other hand thought that google will prefer the meta description to be like a peek to what going to be inside.
anyone can explain me, what is better?

Thanks

[Alick300]

Hi,

Check this article @ https://moz.com/learn/seo/meta-description

Hope this helps.

Thanks

[GPainter]

Hi there,

You're right, a meta description should almost be like the blurb on a book giving the user a good idea of whats going on inside the page. The reason you might find that some meta descriptions are picking up the first words of content is because if a website does not have a meta description set, Google will pull what it thinks to be a good meta description from the content: normally he first sentence or two.  They key is to get a good mix of good content, improve CTR & mix a keywordsor two in into a small area.

If you want some tips on writing a good meta descriptions there are some great resources here on Moz like the beginners guide to or Alick300s suggestions.You can also look through Q&A etc.

Hope that helps.

[ClaytonJ]

The meta description allows you an opportunity to construct your search result or Ad - for clickability.

Alick and Chris are spot on. You should consider creating a 156-160 characters meta description and ensure comprised with a call of action, so when customers read the meta description, they will be enticed to click on your link and visit your website. Meta descriptions are very important given their impact to directly drive traffic to your site.

Google has stated the meta description is not a direct ranking factor. Indirectly however it is. If more people click through to your website and those people ALSO engage with your website - our experience is your ranking can increase. If you increase your CTR on one page by changing the meta description it can translate into 1,000's of additional clicks per year.

Hope this assists.

[BradsDeals]

Google doesn't really have a preference since it's not a ranking factor. In fact, Google will often ignore your meta description entirely in favor of displaying a content snippet that it considers to be more relevant to the searcher's query.

However, you can increase your click-through rate by making it relevant to the query you're targeting. Make it descriptive and consider including a call to action to entice a searcher to click on your link. However, I disagree with another poster that click-through rate can affect rankings. It would be too easy to game the system, and search engines caught on to that trick a long, long time ago.

Basically, write unique, relevant meta descriptions for readers, not for search bots; and understand that Google will always treat your meta description as nothing more than a polite suggestion.

[ClaytonJ]

Rebecca - CTR does not effect rankings, not what I said. However I believe that google does monitor the users on page experience and check whether they task complete. If they task complete and spend time on the site, we have seen rankings influenced by that.  So a combination of CTR and time on site/task complete.

[anthonydnelson]

Writing your own unique, compelling meta description is best. Often, large sites resort to using first words of content as the meta description because they cannot scale writing and implementing 100,000+ meta descriptions.

[roeesa]

Thanks all for your insights on this - it's very helpful.

If you have a unique page I am sure, writing unique content is best. But in the example of Yelp, where they have 100,000+ of pages, the meta description in the code is the first lines from the first post on the page.

Would they be better off creating a general template for each page type ?

For example for restaurant pages (JUST AN EXAMPLE

"<# of posts> posts about <restaurant name="">, what did people like? what did people hate? - read on Yelp"</restaurant>

Thanks again for your help!

[BradsDeals]

Dynamic templates can be a great solution, so long as you're incorporating a variety of dynamic elements, not just swapping out one or two words.

I have seen some debate on whether or not to set a meta description, and I think it's really a CRO choice. Google is always going to match a search query with a relevant excerpt from the page when a meta description is not available, so if you trust Google's judgment, it can be fine to go without. I don't think that philosophy is hurting Yelp at all.