MarketingSherpa Blog

There is no evidence that the meta-description affects the ranking of web pages.

However, if the meta-description includes search query terms, the engines are more likely to use all or a portion of the meta-description as the search snippet, and thus increase the perceived relevance of the page to the searcher and therefore increasing the likelihood of a click and higher CTR%.

While your first bullet point addresses the fact that relevant content can make the description more compelling and increase the likelihood of a click, the third bullet point seems to imply that the meta-description plays a role in ranking webpages, which is not the case.

Bradley,

I strongly disagree that meta-descriptions don’t affect the ranking of webpages. I recently revised the meta-descriptions for a half a dozen pages belonging to a client and –without making any other changes– I saw small but definite ranking increases in all but one of those pages. Granted, the improvements were all less than five spots but simply by making that the meta-tag includes the selected keyword has to help some, even if only a miniscule amount.

Links, by an ENORMOUS margin, are by far the most important thing you can do to improve your rankings… It’s so old, it’s almost tired and worn out, but the Google bomb is still alive and well today. We have pages that are totally off topic, don’t have ANYTHING to do with what they are ranked for with keywords with competition in the 13 million range (granted – not competitive, but not 100,000 gimme keywords either), that have ranked in under a month with under 200 links from PR0, PR0, and N/A pages….. Multiples, so it wasn’t a fluke…. Can’t do that with meta tags… However, if you have a compelling call to action in your meta tag, and depending on your niche, perhaps your phone number, then you can get conversions straight out of the serps, without a click thru…..ultimately, in most cases, conversions or actions are the goal of webpages, not rankings, so if you can convert from the SERPS without a click thru, you win… Especially for desperate buyer niches – 24 hour emergency plumber/ac/locksmith, etc…

I think meta descriptions are a very key ingredient, but much more needs to be done to rank very high. SEO is very complex, when you have over 60 ranking factors tied into the largest algorithm in the world it takes a science to really figure it out.

Definitely right Daniel. Using meta description, meta tags on all your content is surely be an effective tactics for your b2b website has proper SEO.

The comment section has become an interesting debate on the effectiveness of meta title tags and information. 9 of the top 10 sites ranking for the term “SEO Company” all have that word in the meta title.. so either SEO Companies themselves are just superstitious or it still has a great impact on rankings. Although Mike is correct.. linking is still the highest factor in rankings.

It’s interesting that more than 80% of organizations do not find it difficult to add meta description and title tags – but I wonder if they are effectively researching keywords and creating unique titles and descriptions for each page on their site. I have worked with organizations that understand that meta tags are of value, but not know how to implement tags effectively.

I think that measurement of seo activities is very important things – it shows you the proper way. There are some tools for it, like ColibriTool, Google Analytics and many more.

Google analytics is really the big player! @Richard – the title tags are one of the single most important parts of your SEO. It is the relationship and relevancy between title tags, content, headers, and your backlinks which determines your rank in the search engines.