How to Optimise Meta Descriptions

[seanmccauley]

Following advice here on Seomoz we have managed to boost rankings of several keywords onto page 1. However, this welcome visibilty has revealed some weak meta descriptions. We also run an adwords campaign and are familiar with best practice in writing adwords copy which can be monitored via ctr. However other than testing which can be a little lengthy and given that we have 1000s of pages (www.pretavoir.co.uk) as a ecommerce store, what is best practice in writing meta descriptions to increase organic ctr?

Thanks

[webseoservices]

I agree that writing relevant descriptions for such a large site can be a tedious and long process.

We also have an ecommerce joomla site that has over 2000 products listed. When we took over the site it had no SEF url's, almost all the meta tag descriptions and titles were the same.

The bounce rate when we started was approx. 60% and since we have started working through each product and changing SEF Links, Meta Title and Meta Description tags related to specific keyword search terms for each product our bounce rate has dropped to 25%. Thus we are getting much more relevant traffic.

So good luck with doing the changes as it will be worth while in the long term.

[EGOL]

This is a very broad question.

As a general answer you want to write descriptions that elicit clicks, communicate value, inspire curiosity, demonstrate expertise.... whatever it takes to get searchers to click.

When you read a description in the SERPs what makes you click?

[blackballonline]

Some really crafty ways to increase clickthrough and enhance your listings in general can be found here. This post should provide you with some other great ideas for your ecomm site as well.

[EssEEmily]

Exactly as EGOL said it's all about what makes someone click. It helps to put yourself in the position of the searcher. If I'm looking specifically for Jimmy Choo glasses, I would want to see that in the first part of the meta description to ensure me that your page is one that has what I'm looking for.

It's a large task, but there really is no way of short cutting it.

I did notice that your product pages don't have much in the way of descriptive copy. Once you have your descriptions written out you can use some of that language for descriptions on the site (or vice versa). With product pages can help to have descriptive text to help you rank.

Hope that helps and best of luck!

[seanmccauley]

Thanks Egol and Emily. You're correct about our lack of descriptive content. Now that really is a job, for 14k products.....;(

[EGOL]

Now that really is a job for 14k products.....;(

Yes, but since it will be a difficult job it should put you into a position where you have very few competitors.

I would absolutely do this if your website has a little power and you are currently getting some visible rankings.  However, if your site has a weak backlink profile when compared to your competitors then that problem will also need to be addressed too.

[EssEEmily]

Exactly what EGOL said.

Sometimes the hardest work is the most rewarding.