Meta Description Template

[kylesuss]

For a blog that already has thousands of posts, what is a good template for meta descriptions?

I guess I assume that the best way to do it would be to do a custom one for each post, but given the amount of time that would take, I'd like to hear some alternatives.

Thanks!

[AdiRste]

If the page isn't that important then you can actually leave out the Meta Description if it's that much of a headache for you.

[StalkerB]

Yup, Google should just grab a piece it thinks is relevant.

Additionally if your meta description doesn't match what the user is searching for (but other content on you page matches) Google will sometimes show that instead anyway.

[USHoleInOne]

You could use an SEO plugin so that the meta description is the same formula (ex: "category" | "blog post" etc...), several are available for WordPress.

[kylesuss]

Hey Nicholas,

Sounds more like a suggestion for a page title? Those are much easier to implement. We're already using an SEO plugin for Wordpress but aren't sure what to do as our meta description template. Titles are taken care of at this point.

Thanks for the response!

[STPseo]

Hi. You want to make sure they are unique and the interesting stuff is up front. These descriptions can help with click through as that is what the search person will first see after the title.

I'd suggest something like: [blog title] - [blog category] - by [blog author] - [blog date]

This will keep them unique and if it gets truncated the important stuff is up front. With this in mind you could tell them bloggers to make sure they have relevant and catchy blog titles to garner that click!

[ShaMenz]

Hi Kyle,

Actually Nicholas is right on the money - you just have to use the right plugin to get a much more comprehensive and useful feature set than just editing page titles.  There are several around, but by far the best I have found (credit to Alan Blewiss for the tip some time ago) is Yoast SEO.

The plugin allows you to enter your chosen keyword(s) and then indicates keyword usage for Title, description etc. If you have already entered a Title it will analyze and report on keyword usage. You can choose to either ignore the analysis and keep the existing title, or edit it along with description etc. All of these options and a whole lot more are available at post and blog level.

Yes, Google will grab something off the page, but I would always prefer to at least offer it a description that is written for conversion - that is what your description is for ...to help "sell" the site to a user who sees it appear in the SERPs as Stephan also described.

[kylesuss]

Hey Sha,

We already have the Yoast SEO plugin

As we have thousands of posts, we don't want to write a custom description for each one. Within the Yoast SEO plugin, we have the option to create a template for meta descriptions, so the purpose of my question was to see if there is a good "template" for meta descriptions that I can use for thousands of posts.

[kylesuss]

Saw this on Yoast's blog:

"Auto generating a snippet is a "shortcut", and there are no real shortcuts in (WordPress) SEO (none that work anyway)."

Question answered