What is a Meta Description ?

The meta description of your page or post, while not all that important to rankings can be incredibly important on click through rates when your pages come up for Google searchers.

The pages that are revealed when we use Google Search to find information on the Internet are known as SERPs or Search Engine Results Pages. Where our pages (or article posts) are listed in the SERPs is commonly referred to as our "Rank".

Of course, we all want the Number 1 slot in the SERPs when anyone keys in our chosen keywords.

But, have you wondered about the description that is revealed when our pages come up in that list? This is the information pulled from the Meta Description we either key in OR allow All-in-One SEO plug-in to pull automagically.

For example, here is one of my pages in the SERPs:

Okay, so the wee description below "A quick and simple explanation of LSI keywords and how they can be used to enhance SEO." is the actual Meta Description I used when I created this post a long time ago. I should have actually done a better job, but this article was simply created to support a much larger article. :-)

These are also referred to as the "snippet" - because it's a mere snippet of the article/page - the main idea. Cute term, right? Sounds like a type of fish to me, but then I'm getting hungry.

Regardless, you get the idea.

Now, as you can imagine, there are hundreds, if not, millions of articles on this topic. This article isn't even on page 1. But, if it were and YOU were the Google Searcher, how this reads in comparison to the competition can be extremely important.

It could be the difference between a click on a link that is ranking in THIRD place versus a click on the FIRST place ranking. (While not always the case, of course) But, when we scan down page one and the description of the link just really sucks, I'm not going to click on it.

I'm going to CLICK on the relevant one. The one written for exactly what I'm searching for, right?

So, when creating your Meta Descriptions, think of them as a sorta Ad Copy for your articles and pages.

I have seen many folks just allow the first sentence to automatically be used as part of the meta description and it has very little to do with the actual article you're trying to rank!