Michael Johnson

The term, “meta description” may seem foreign to some but we all see these descriptions each time we search for something online. The meta description can contain up to 320 characters and should be an interesting summary of what your website is all about. It shows up in the search results as those first few words/lines that explain the essence of your website or post.

How Meta Descriptions Work

Each time we type a search term in the browser, a number of results will come up. For each one, there’s a 320 character description of the site or page. People usually decide which site to click on based on what these meta descriptions say. That means it has to be snappy and fresh. The wording needs to grab your attention. It has to sound enticing. Think of it as a short, but powerful sales pitch. Potential customers are far more likely to visit a site that sounds unique, interesting or entertaining than one that sounds boring.

Though search engines make it clear that there’s no direct advantage from writing good meta descriptions, there is a very strong indirect benefit. If you’ve written a good meta description, then this will improve your click-through-rate (CTR). As visitors click-through to your site, the search engine uses that information as a way of determining that your site was aptly and well described. This will improve your position in the search results.

It is important to point out here that Google will not always show your unique meta description. Sometimes they generate their own description of your business based on factors like the search term and type of business it is. This is where keywords come into play. Most business owners now understand at least the basics of keywords and how they work. If your content is well-optimized, then it should reflect that by serving as a great meta description.

Google changes the way their search engine works at times and this can certainly throw a wrench in all your good plans. However, that should not stop business owners from doing sound keyword research and creating unique content with those keywords. It goes without saying that keyword stuffing is bad and should be avoided at all costs. Always observe the current standards for keyword density in a page of text, which usually runs around 2 to 2.5 percent.

Yoast Free or Premium?

Yoast offers a free and a premium SEO service. With the free service, you get one keyword for each page of content. The premium service allows five keywords for each page. The premium service also does a readability check using the Flesch Kincaid test which measures the grade level of your writing. Since the world wide web is filled with people from all backgrounds and educations, Flesch Kincaid usually recommends writing copy that would be easy reading for a third to fifth grader.

Use short concise sentences. Avoid big words that are not readily understood unless you are writing technical information for a specific audience, like IT experts. Try to use action verbs instead of passive verbs. Use subheadings and catchy taglines. Whatever you can do to make your site more attractive, unique and fun, will help. You can count on getting more traffic and higher conversion rates.

How to Use Yoast SEO to Write Meta Descriptions

If you don’t write a unique meta description, Yoast will produce one. Usually, it simply takes the first three lines of content on your page or post and uses that. If you’d like to edit that, then click on the “edit snippet” button. This opens the snippet editor. There are fields there to edit the SEO title, slug and meta description. As you type, your new meta description will show up. You can make changes until you feel it’s just right. The snippet editor has an orange bar at the bottom that will become green once you’ve typed enough information.

Many site owners use the first few lines of content on their page or post as the meta description. If your site has good, professionally written content on it, then there’s nothing wrong with that. However, if you feel you could improve the text, then, by all means, do so. If you can get the hang of this and really write powerful meta descriptions, it can greatly improve your click-through rates.

How to Write a Superb Meta Description

Once you’ve decided that this is something worthwhile that could improve your bottom line, it’s important to put your best foot forward. In order to write effective meta descriptions, you may need the help of a good copywriter. Copywriting is all about utilizing words to persuade searchers to click on your page. With only 320 characters or about two to three lines of text, it’s important to make every word count. Below are two writing examples to show you the difference between professionally written text and that of an amateur.

Good Meta Description:

Apple

https://www.apple.com/

Discover the innovative world of Apple and shop everything iPhone, iPad, Apple Watch, Mac, and AppleTV, plus explore accessories, entertainment, and expert device support.

The above meta description from Apple does contain some good keywords but it doesn’t feel awkward or forced. It’s informative. It’s also important to note that this meta description was written using the older rules where 155 characters were the rule. Today, we’re seeing longer snippets that contain more information to help searchers decide what to click on.

Bad Meta Description:

Mary’s Bakery

https://www.marysbakery.com/

Get some good donuts and cakes at Mary’s Bakery located in downtown Minneapolis. We cater and deliver. Our baked goods are tasty and made with quality ingredients.

Though the above meta description does contain some valuable information, it’s boring. The shop owner wastes valuable space here to tell consumers where they’re located. This is something that many searchers will not care about in their initial search. Use this space to talk about delicious pastries, cakes, and donuts. Talk about your award-winning cupcakes with buttercream icing. This is how you get people to visit your site and look around.

Caution!

Be sure that your meta description accurately describes your page or post. Yes, the wording can be flowery, powerful, strangely attractive, etc. But it should also be truthful. If you make promises you can’t keep, then searchers will quickly hit the “back” button. This can cause your site to fall in the search listings.

As mentioned above, avoid keyword stuffing. Just about all web visitors today understand what keyword stuffing is and most don’t like it. The reason? Keyword stuffing makes a section of text read awkwardly. It is typically not well-written content and it doesn’t make sense to your human visitors. Remember to write your meta description for humans, not for search engines.

Instead, focus on writing interesting descriptions and unique content for your human visitors. In the end, search engines will not be purchasing your products and services. Humans will, so cater to their needs, wants, desires, whims—and you’ll be rewarded with higher click-through rates and stronger sales.

Social media is big business and has the potential to drive millions of visitors to websites, engage directly with customers on a public platform, and solve – or create – problems in real time. What is the future of “social business”?

Twenty years ago, marketing and promotions were simple and straightforward. The majority of efforts were focused on print: newspaper and magazine advertising, The Yellow Pages, direct mail, billboards, and perhaps flyers. Email marketing was in its infancy, and digital marketing wasn’t quite yet an industry – though there are firms that argue this time frame. Metrics were relatively predictable, and results were in the form of sales and revenue.

• Yes, The Yellow Pages telephone directories still offer printed books. Publishers of “phone books”, as they’re often referred to, reduced paper usage by half before 2013, and major efforts are in place to ensure unused or outdated materials are recycled.

This is not the case today! There are so many facets to “digital marketing” that it’s safe to say the industry is constantly evolving. Yes, constantly. The rules change just as often, and the de facto rule-maker is Google. Google has the famous “Google algorithm”, by which all search parameters are defined. If a business or brand doesn’t meet Google’s search preferences, they’ve wasted their time and won’t make the first page of a user’s search results – and when was the last time you clicked past the first page of results in an average Google search?

There are ads within emails and ads on websites, and even “sponsored results” in an Internet search. Consumers have ads coming at them from every angle of the Internet, so why would social media – including the King of Social Media, Facebook – be any different? It’s not. In fact, a Facebook user is valued even more highly than a search user. The Facebook user is already engaged with a website, and it’s one where the content that loads is customized and personalized for each user. Google tries to do this with search results, but there’s only so much Google can do with a string of words and no context. Both Google and Facebook have the user’s history of cookies, but Facebook has the incredibly valuable position of knowing a user’s friends, families, what content a user likes – literally “likes” by clicking the blue-and-white thumbs-up symbol – and what news stories, photos, and content a user clicks on and engages with. In this context, Google’s metric is the click in terms of the value of a visitor, whereas Facebook’s value of a click is a highly-engaged user already on the website and opting to give more of their time and attention. The ultimate competition comes down to the value of a visitor versus the value of a click.

After evolving from a social platform into a platform that can be highly monetized, Facebook turned the digital marketing industry upside down with the newly-invented notion of advertising right in front of Facebook users. Any organization or brand that has ever paid for advertising on Facebook is used to Facebook changing things up by now – after all, Facebook changes their approach on a regular basis. After seizing the lead and maintaining this very profitable position for years – and years – the brain trust recently announced a bold decision to simplify their overall approach – after long being the primary innovator in social media and marketing and carving the path which others follow today.

Facebook Advertisers Are Users, Too

Facebook users fondly recall a time when privacy settings at the user level resembled a “stealth” mode when users had the ability to set their account information, including their names and other details, as completely private and would not show in other Facebook user searches. The added bonus was the implied guarantee that photos, posts, and other user content had this same level of protection. Sometime around 2009, Facebook implemented a pretty major privacy settings overhaul and many users who long enjoyed stealth status were suddenly thrust into the spotlight – and was no longer “invisible”. In all fairness, Facebook gave plenty of advance notice this change was coming. Their public reason was that Facebook is a social media platform, not a private website where a user could have total control – and this is a fair position. Facebook is a free website for users, but it’s not a nonprofit organization. Ever evolving, their approach has tweaked and allowed users to choose various privacy settings for posts, images, etc., which are highly customizable if the user chooses to take the time.

In 2017, Facebook recognized a growing dissatisfaction from its users and tried to pinpoint the cause. After much speculation, Facebook realized the greatest impact to the user experience is the allowance of brands to intermingle with users in their feeds, detracting from the social purpose of the channel. Thus, more major changes were in store. Facebook announced a desire to go “back to basics” and return the focus of a user’s feed to posts shared by friends and family members and make it harder for brands to get their content seen (unless advertisers were willing to pay). The result was that post reach – the number of people that see a post in their feed – plummeted. The plan was for average Facebook users to see fewer news stories, cat videos, political posts, or branded content, but rather see more photos shared by friends of birthday parties, graduations, and other significant events entirely unrelated to corporate messaging.

Privacy, Redefined

The change to the Facebook feed was a welcome change to users and required a major adjustment to social media marketing efforts for companies. Details of how the changes rolled out and the reasons for these changes trickled into news stories until major news broke that Facebook sold private user information on more than 87 million Facebook accounts to an organization involved in the political arena in 2016. Users worldwide felt violated that a trusted entity would share such private details – a harsh reminder that Facebook is a for-profit entity and users need to read the “fine print” and not just agree to Terms and Conditions without reading. Your digital life is not your own when using a website owned by someone other than yourself.

So, what can Facebook users do to protect themselves? Without deleting your Facebook account, it’s wise to do a once-over on user privacy settings every few months to verify what might have changed and safeguard your information.

• Check your privacy settings
• Facebook offers a variety of user settings allowing for a spectrum of privacy, though most remain a mystery to users. Under “Settings”, click “Privacy” and control how visible information like posts, account information like phone numbers and email addresses, and friend requests and more are.
• Keep friends close
• Friends’ activity can impact others. If a user allows tagging in a friend’s activity, this is then affected by their privacy settings and is subject to sharing or visibility by others.
• Beware third-party apps
• At first, it seemed benign to click “accept” when a third-party app or quiz intrigued a user enough to click content, with the innocent warning that the app would thus be granted access to a user’s profile and list of friends. That list of friends became an incredibly valuable commodity in an environment where privacy settings were controlled by a user – a tricky little workaround.
• Users can adjust these settings quickly and easily but often didn’t go back to limit access.
• Review security alerts
• Users can opt for security alerts when Facebook detects a new login from a different device or browser. Two-factor authentication is also an option. To enable, access the same “Settings” menu, and click “Security and Login” from the left navigation and choose “Setting Up Extra Security”.

Security considerations impact all Facebook users, regardless if a user is also an advertiser. Before abandoning Facebook entirely, employ additional efforts to protect user data and your privacy. This type of “social security” has nothing to do with the government-issued card Americans carry, and a few additional steps will help secure user information and improve the Facebook user experience.