Tweaking the Meta Descriptions for More Clicks....

Okay, the first thing to remember here is that the search engines DO NOT always pay attention to this. They will pull what they want. BUT, more often than not, this does work!

So smile and keep reading.

As I mentioned, generally, the first sentence or two, depending on length is pulled for the description. BUT, here is the actual first sentence of the article:

Yep, it begins with something totally different: "With the use of the World Wide Web...." yada yada yada, boring and needs a serious update.

BUT.....

WordPress also provides us with an Excerpt function.

See the Excerpt area here in my post editor:



UPDATE for Lena

WHAT? Excerpts box not showing up in there?

Step 1: Within your post editor, click this wee button in the upper-right corner, Screen Options as indicated here:

Step 2: Click to enable Excerpts (and go ahead and make sure All-In-One SEO is enabled as indicated here:

Okay, as you were! ;-)



And, as a reminder of the SERPs, here is the actual description that was indexed by Google:

And, BOOM, now you see the correlation between the two! The Excerpt overrides the All-in-One autogenerate function when I want it to do so.

Ya gotta love the flexibility of WordPress (although some would argue that these features create complexity. LOL!)

Okay, as I mentioned, there's more than one way to handle this. The Excerpt is one function. I'll show you another shortly. But, let me also enlighten you to what else this excerpt does for you.

Here is where this specific article shows up in my blog roll:

The image is pulled from the "Featured Image" function of the post (this is found on the right margin when you're in edit mode.

And, that wee description that visitors see when scrolling through all my article liistings (blog roll) is also pulled from the Excerpt function I mentioned above.

Now, on to method TWO of how to Tweak the Meta Description (snippet).



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LizPB Premium
Thanks for this training! Very helpful!!

Just a question about something related...authorship. What should you do when authorship doesn't work and there's not picture beside the description? Is it very necessary and does it make a big difference in clicks?
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PjGermain Premium
Google ended support for "authorship" coding (aka rel=author) back in 2014 and announced that they were no longer going to look at that data. So, I'm gonna say it doesn't make a difference. Now, there are other circumstances that do, like Local SEO. If you can get an image in there, DO IT! It's worth a thousand words, right? :-)
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LizPB Premium
Ahh ok! That's why it doesn't work then. Thanks again!
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PjGermain Premium
;-)
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VicC Premium
Hi pj! Thx for this tutorial, I've been using the 2nd method, but sometimes lazy to fill up the Meta Desc. until I read your post here today! So, I quickly updated them! lol But, when I tried to search using google to check if the changes have been reflected, it haven't. How long do you think it will take to take effect?
Vic
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PjGermain Premium
Yea, that will take some time to reflect. Not sure exactly how long. Depends on when the search bots visit again.
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VicC Premium
Oic, I found out that in some of my post, the Google was intelligent enough to pick the most relevant sentences from my post to represent the Meta Desc. Better than my rewrite version.. hehe..
Anyway, thx again for taking the time to share this knowledge with us!
Have a nice weekend! :-)
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PjGermain Premium
Awesome! Thanks, you do the same!
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SWATTS99 Premium
This was very helpful and now I am going to go back to all my pages and posts to a Meta Description because you're right it could mean the difference between page 1 and page 3. Thank you for sharing your insight and perspective knowledge. This is why I love WA. The people make it great!

Have a great weekend,
~Shawna
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PjGermain Premium
Happy to help Shawna! Thanks for the comments! Have a Fabulous Weekend!
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shirian Premium
It really remarkable putting effort to creat informative tutorial. As always appreciate it! Thank you pj
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PjGermain Premium
Thanks very much Shirian! I hope it helps at least a few members!
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Themonkeyman Premium
another great tutorial by PJ
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PjGermain Premium
Thanks again Brad!!!
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