Ensuring that Google Display my Meta Descriptions

[jasongmcmahon]

Hello,

I have a few pages that appear in SERPs with the page copy as opposed to the meta descriptions I wrote, is there any way to try & force the meta descriptions to be displayed?

Its a WordPress site using Yoast

[ClaytonJ]

The short answer is no.

However, you can try and tilt the cause for Google to pull your prescribed meta description. Need to "evaluate" the MD being pulled.   Why is google pulling that piece of content? and not your prescribed MD.  The MD should be contextual ie customer query therein for the query the page is targeting.  Aim for the 150-160 character limit (though worked on pixels) - don't keyword stuff etc. No duplication, original content.

It is often a  quality issue.  If you re-work it over a few weeks we tend to be successful.

Hope that helps.

[KevinBudzynski]

Nope. Typically if a searcher queries a keyword and it's not in your meta description,  Google will show snippets of where it is used on your page.

[effectdigital]

Delete all the other content on the page

Nah just kidding. There's really no way to achieve that, other than writing a Meta Description which Google would prefer to render, against the rest of the page's content