With the clos­ing of open con­tent direc­to­ry DMOZ and Google recent­ly com­ing out and say­ing meta descrip­tions are more impor­tant than ever, we reached out to SEOs to get their best-kept secrets for craft­ing the per­fect meta descrip­tion.

In oth­er words, aside from for­get­ting about meta descrip­tions alto­geth­er, using the same ones across mul­ti­ple pages or uti­liz­ing low-qual­i­ty meta descrip­tions, here are SEOs’ 15 best tricks to help boost organ­ic CTR sim­ply by con­vinc­ing con­sumers to click on your links in the SERPs:

1. Optimize pages ranks for queries with high impressions and low clicks

If over­haul­ing your meta descrip­tions seems like an over­whelm­ing task, the best place to start is like­ly with those that aren’t work­ing.

That’s accord­ing to Max Schle­ich­er, SEO cam­paign man­ag­er at cus­tomer feed­back soft­ware firm Review­Track­ers.
“Track your CTR rate and any­thing with low CTR rel­a­tive to its aver­age posi­tion should jump out at you,” he said. “Start with those ones. Users are telling you that these descrip­tions aren’t work­ing.”

In oth­er words, Vladimir Fefer, SEO man­ag­er for retail­er Zoro.com, said mar­keters should look in search ana­lyt­ics in their Google search con­sole accounts, fil­ter out the brand­ed queries and sort by most impres­sions.

“Look for the queries that have a lot of impres­sions but low clicks. Find out what page is rank­ing for that query and then opti­mize the meta descrip­tion of that page for that spe­cif­ic query,” Fefer said. “Then if you want to go deep­er, fil­ter the search con­sole query report for just that URL and see all the oth­er queries it’s rank­ing for and make sure that your con­tent is well suit­ed for those high-impres­sion queries. I’ve con­sis­tent­ly seen CTR improve using this tac­tic and then rank­ings tend to fol­low a few weeks lat­er.”

In fact, Julie How­ell, SEO direc­tor for legal mar­ket­ing agency Postali, advised pulling a list of pages with high impres­sions and low CTRs every six months and eval­u­at­ing those meta descrip­tions to deter­mine why CTR is low, like miss­ing a call to action or a trun­cat­ed descrip­tion.

2. Use multiple resources

When think­ing about what to include, Chris Williams, dig­i­tal mar­ket­ing and com­mu­ni­ca­tions man­ag­er for IT and web con­sult­ing agency Plan­et­Mag­pie, said to con­sid­er mul­ti­ple sources, like buy­er per­sona descrip­tions to char­ac­ter­ize your audi­ence and inform your con­tent approach, key­word research to find and ver­i­fy key­words con­sumers use in search and Ana­lyt­ics and/or Google Search Con­sole to make sure the key­words you select have rel­e­vance.

3. Include the right keywords – but don’t go overboard

Per Tom Wright, SEO/SEM spe­cial­ist at retail­er AmericanEagle.com, one of the best ways to increase CTR in organ­ic search is to make sure the main key­word is in the meta descrip­tion.

“This is because the key­words are in bold in the search results,” he said.

And this means con­sumers will eas­i­ly see the tar­get­ed terms they are search­ing for, added Bill Row­land, direc­tor of SEO at e‑commerce con­sult­ing and opti­miza­tion firm Trin­i­ty Insight.

It can also mean Google will dis­play the meta descrip­tion you want.

“Google does­n’t have to dis­play the meta descrip­tion in the SERPs. In many cas­es, it will opt to pick a more rel­e­vant sec­tion of con­tent from the page and dis­play that instead,” said Jonathan Jenk­ins, SEO man­ag­er at Thrive Inter­net Mar­ket­ing. “This rel­e­vance is deter­mined by whether or not the search term used match­es the query, hence the moti­va­tion to include some traf­fic-dri­ving key­words in your meta descrip­tion. This will increase the like­li­hood that your care­ful­ly craft­ed meta descrip­tion appears in SERPs, instead of some ran­dom­ly select­ed piece of con­tent from the page.”

4. Make sure it describes what customers are looking for so they get what they want

Per­haps most impor­tant­ly, Ter­ence Chan­non, prin­ci­pal of tech­nol­o­gy and mar­ket­ing ser­vices firm NewLead, said to make sure the meta descrip­tion accu­rate­ly reflects the page title and the con­tent on the page.

“This way, when the user reach­es your page on the heels of your search result con­tent, they can again say, ‘Yes, this is what I was look­ing for!’” he said. “Google also rewards excep­tion­al cus­tomer expe­ri­ences — and that includes the rel­e­vance and like­li­hood for a user to click on your search result due to its rel­e­vance to the user’s ini­tial search term and the user tak­ing action on your site once there [ver­sus mere­ly bounc­ing].”

Sam War­ren, man­ag­er of mar­ket­ing and part­ner­ships at SEO firm Rank­Pay, said this means think­ing care­ful­ly about con­sumer intent.

“Instead of say­ing what you want to say about your brand/site/product, focus on what the searcher is hop­ing to find,” War­ren said. “Try putting your­self in the searcher’s shoes and imag­ine what you’d like to see when you per­form the exact search that your page is opti­mized for. You might just be sur­prised by what you find while brain­storm­ing.”

As if that wasn’t enough, if the meta descrip­tion does not sat­is­fy intent, the brand could end up with a high CTR and a high bounce rate, added Rob Mars­den, head of SEO at SEO and dig­i­tal mar­ket­ing agency Search Lab­o­ra­to­ry.

James Rice, head of dig­i­tal mar­ket­ing at Wik­i­Job, a forum, jobs board and careers advice por­tal, agreed.

“Answer the ‘So what?’-question,” Rice said. “Where’s the val­ue for the read­er? Why should they both­er click­ing through?”

5. Survey the existing landscape

Dave Her­mansen, CEO of e‑commerce train­ing course Store Coach, said not to cre­ate meta descrip­tions blind­ly, but rather to search for the key­word phrase you’re tar­get­ing for a page and look at the AdWords ads com­pa­nies are run­ning for that phrase.

“Those ad head­lines and ad copy have like­ly been split test­ed hun­dreds if not thou­sands of times to deter­mine what the most effec­tive words are for get­ting clicks,” he said. “We look for words that the ads have in com­mon and use those words in our titles and meta descrip­tions. Why guess when oth­er peo­ple have already done the test­ing for you?”

Indeed, War­ren agreed brands should look at what their com­peti­tors are doing on the same SERP – and do it bet­ter.

“If they’re all doing the same thing, but doing it poor­ly, mim­ic the approach, but do it bet­ter,” he said. “If they already have strong meta descrip­tions, then brain­storm ways to dif­fer­en­ti­ate your own list­ing from the mass­es. This could be pos­ing an unusu­al ques­tion to searchers. It could be let­ting your per­son­al­i­ty shine through. If it’s appro­pri­ate, you could high­light a sale or ben­e­fit of choos­ing your brand.”

Schle­ich­er sug­gest­ed look­ing inward, too, and find­ing which sites are under­per­form­ing.

“You can get a lot of great ideas for your meta descrip­tion by see­ing what is work­ing on that page,” Schle­ich­er said. “When you start think­ing about meta descrip­tions as copy, you’ll start to rec­og­nize why your com­peti­tors are win­ning and you’re los­ing for those organ­ic clicks. Two things — short titles [and] com­pelling num­bers in titles or descrip­tions — can go a long way to improv­ing CTR.”

6. Write like a writer

Dan Sevi­gny, CEO of dig­i­tal agency Spooky Dig­i­tal, said his advice to dig­i­tal mar­keters is to study the sci­ence of copy­writ­ing and learn how to write per­sua­sive copy that sells.

“You have 150 char­ac­ters in a meta descrip­tion to tell the user what your site is about and con­vince them to take the next step and click your link,” Sevi­gny added.

And that means being pre­cise with lan­guage, includ­ing emo­tion­al, atten­tion-grab­bing words, Sevi­gny said.

David Erick­son, vice pres­i­dent of online mar­ket­ing for pub­lic rela­tions agency, Kar­wos­ki and Courage, too, not­ed the meta descrip­tion has the pow­er to entice con­sumers to click – but only if it includes the right lan­guage.

“This is your chance to direct­ly influ­ence the user’s will­ing­ness to click on your site – don’t screw it up,” added Chris Casse­day, direc­tor of oper­a­tions at GNGF, a mar­ket­ing firm that is focused on help­ing lawyers. “Be provoca­tive and engage the user – you will get the click over your com­peti­tor.”

And this can have fur­ther impli­ca­tions in terms of over­all rank­ing.

“Think about it. If Google shows your link with key­word-stuffed meta descrip­tion on the first page for a week and no one clicks it, is it in Google’s inter­est to leave it there? No,” said Michael Mignogna, CEO of SEO mar­ket­ing firm Miny­ona. “Google is in the busi­ness of pro­vid­ing the best answers to peo­ple’s ques­tions. If every­one ignores one of the ten organ­ic answers, Google will replace it with one that gets more play. In short, write for humans, not robots.”

In oth­er words, James McCarthy, CEO of SEO agency Place­ment Labs, said to make meta descrip­tions fun and/or inter­est­ing.

“I have noticed that many SEOs and con­tent cre­ators make metas that are very plain and mat­ter-of-fact. I have found much more suc­cess when I have tak­en the time to try to be a lit­tle more clever or orig­i­nal when writ­ing them,” he said. “Per­haps try to add a lit­tle bit of humor or an inter­est­ing fac­toid – any­thing that might pique a poten­tial reader’s inter­est. This will help your new page from an organ­ic traf­fic stand­point, as you stand to get more clicks than your com­peti­tors who have bor­ing metas.”

7. Think like your PPC counterparts

In fact, Mark Churchill, dig­i­tal mar­ket­ing man­ag­er at invest­ment ser­vice Wealth Club, said to approach meta descrip­tions like you would a PPC ad.

“That means show strong rel­e­vance, but, cru­cial­ly, give the searcher a hook that means they have to click through to find out more,” Churchill said.

Jonathan Alon­so, nation­al mar­ket­ing man­ag­er at smart­phone repair firm uBreak­i­Fix, agreed to think about meta descrip­tions like paid ads.

“Many peo­ple for­get that CTR is a rank­ing fac­tor,” Alon­so said. “When apply­ing behav­ioral words we use in paid search like Free, Best, Low Cost and oth­ers, we can not only see an improve­ment in CTR, but you will see a lot more in SERPs.”

For his part, Mars­den said adver­tis­ers run­ning paid search cam­paigns are like­ly run­ning mul­ti­ple ads per ad group and like­ly already know which head­lines and phras­es work best and pro­duce the opti­mal CTR for tar­get key­word cat­e­gories.

“If you take USPs, phras­es and call to actions from your best per­form­ing ads and use them in your organ­ic list­ings, you can be more sci­en­tif­ic in your approach and increase your aver­age [CTR],” Mars­den added.

8. Include numbers

In addi­tion to rich lan­guage, Paul Allen, SEO con­sul­tant with SEO com­pa­ny DublinSEO.co, said to use num­bers.

“Num­bers are extreme­ly eye-catch­ing as we are nat­u­ral­ly intrigued by prices, offers and pro­mo­tions,” Mars­den added. “Using num­bers when­ev­er pos­si­ble in meta copy will make your list­ings more like­ly to get click-throughs and lead to con­ver­sions.”

9. Include details about special offers

Sim­i­lar­ly, How­ell rec­om­mend­ed think­ing about your brand’s most pow­er­ful dif­fer­en­ti­at­ing fac­tors and mak­ing sure they are includ­ed.

“Chances are, the meta descrip­tions on any SERP are going to be pret­ty sim­i­lar,” she said. “If you can high­light some­thing that makes you stand out, you improve your chances of gar­ner­ing more click-throughs.”

Jenk­ins said that con­tent can also include spe­cial offers.

“For many peo­ple, the process of com­par­i­son shop­ping for a prod­uct or ser­vice starts with the first search in Google or one of the oth­er search engines,” he said. “If your meta descrip­tion includes ‘Free Ship­ping & Han­dling’, or ‘Same day deliv­ery’, that’s very like­ly to pos­i­tive­ly impact your click-through rate.”

10. Use schema

Swap­nil Bhag­wat, senior man­ag­er of design and dig­i­tal media at IT ser­vices and busi­ness process man­age­ment com­pa­ny Orches­trate Tech­nolo­gies, said to use schema markups like star rat­ings, prod­uct infor­ma­tion and cus­tomer rat­ings to increase the appeal of meta descrip­tions.

Mars­den agreed sites that use struc­tured data like rich snip­pets can expect a sig­nif­i­cant increase in CTR and rank­ings.

“The more you can give search engines about the struc­ture and con­text of infor­ma­tion on your web­site, the bet­ter,” Mars­den said. “For instance, if you use schema to mark up the address on your web­site, search engines will iden­ti­fy your loca­tion. This makes your site more like­ly to appear in local­ized results for local search­es. Google real­ly likes to show rich con­tent with­in its search results. If your site con­tains plen­ty of rich con­tent, it’s going to be more vis­i­ble than sites that don’t, there­by increas­ing your click-through rate and site inter­ac­tion. Recipes, reviews, events and prod­uct infor­ma­tion should all be marked up with­in the source code of your web­site, wher­ev­er fea­si­ble.”

11. Make sure it doesn’t truncate

A meta descrip­tion that gets cut off means con­sumers miss your mes­sage.

Mars­den point­ed to online tools that can be used to ensure Google does not trun­cate the meta descrip­tion and cut off impor­tant infor­ma­tion.

“Keep in mind that the max­i­mum descrip­tion length allowed will be small­er on mobile than desk­top so cre­ate the descrip­tions with a mobile-first mind­set,” he added.

12. Test multiple versions

And, of course, you should always test mul­ti­ple ver­sions to ensure opti­mal results.

Allen point­ed to Google Adwords’ A/B test­ing fea­ture, which allows adver­tis­ers to test and retest what works for increas­ing CTR.

“The good thing is the results of these tests are free to observe through the result­ing ad itself,” he said.

“A/B test sev­er­al ver­sions of your meta descrip­tions on dif­fer­ent pages and dis­cov­er which ver­sion worked best for your desired tar­get audi­ence,” said Matt Edstrom, head of mar­ket­ing at health sci­ence start­up BioClar­i­ty. “Once you have found the best per­form­ing vari­a­tion, you can then go back and adjust the oth­er meta descrip­tions accord­ing­ly.”

Sam Kessenich, SEO Spe­cial­ist with dig­i­tal mar­ket­ing firm RyTech, agreed.

“Once you have a rank­ing on a search engine or a fol­low­ing on social media, test out a few dif­fer­ent types of meta descrip­tions. Try a more broad descrip­tion that can catch a vari­ety of people’s atten­tion, then a more fact-focused descrip­tion,” he said. “Through this all, keep in mind the cus­tomer you’re try­ing to focus on and how they think. The tone and ver­biage will change depend­ing on the age, gen­der, loca­tion and indus­try you hope to tar­get.”

Kate Neuens, mar­ket­ing ana­lyst at online lender OppLoans, said this should include exper­i­ment­ing with length and where you are posi­tion­ing the key­word, as well as how you phrase the call to action.

How­ell even advised ask­ing friends in paid search to share insight on ad copy tests.

“This can give you tremen­dous­ly use­ful insight on what type of lan­guage works well to dri­ve clicks in your spe­cif­ic indus­try,” she said.

13. Make updates easy

Cassedy sug­gest­ed mak­ing it easy to update meta descrip­tions on an ongo­ing basis.

“If your site is a Word­Press site, use a plu­g­in like Yoast that can allow you to make bulk edits quick­ly,” he said.

Sim­i­lar­ly, Williams said brands should not let their descrip­tions go stale.

“Plan to update your descrip­tions every time you update your con­tent [or the top­ic your con­tent cov­ers under­goes a change online],” he said. “At the very least, go through the entire site every six months and update all the meta descrip­tions.”

And, per Mars­den, even though it’s a good idea to reg­u­lar­ly update meta copy with offers or pro­mo­tions, brands must nev­er let them go out of date as this can have a neg­a­tive impact on the way audi­ences see your busi­ness in search engines.

14. Tap into location authority

For his part, Bob­by Hol­land, own­er of SEO and web­site devel­op­ment com­pa­ny Bip­per Media, said one way busi­ness­es can lever­age meta descrip­tion tags in a pow­er­ful way – and that vir­tu­al­ly no one is using – is to tap into loca­tion author­i­ty.

“For local busi­ness­es, or busi­ness­es cre­at­ing city pages to tar­get sur­round­ing mar­kets, includ­ing your address — or at least the city/state… — would be a pow­er­ful way to influ­ence loca­tion author­i­ty,” Hol­land said. “And loca­tion author­i­ty direct­ly cor­re­lates to the pres­ence your busi­ness achieves in search — both local/Google Maps and organ­ic.”

15. Consider leaving it blank for blogs

For blogs specif­i­cal­ly, Kessenich said leav­ing a meta descrip­tion blank can work to your advan­tage some­times.

“When longer tail keywords/voice search is being uti­lized, a meta descrip­tion can be catered by search engines to include the sec­tion of text users are search­ing for,” he said. “I’ve been click through rates sky­rock­et and believe they will only con­tin­ue to go up with the grow­ing pop­u­lar­i­ty of voice search.”