It is said that meta description, which describes the contents of a page concisely, has no direct SEO effect, but it plays an essential role in conveying the contents of a page to users in search results.
It is said to have no direct SEO effect, but it does play an essential role in conveying the content of a page to users in search results.
Meta description can explain page content that cannot be understood from the title alone, contributing significantly to the click-through rate.
This article will show you what to do when meta description is not updated well and how to write meta descriptions that Google likes.
2. What happens if you do not write meta description
3. Reasons why meta description is not updated
- Google does not judge meta description as appropriate
- Google does not recognize the change of meta description.
- Meta description is duplicated
4. What to do if your meta description is not updated
5. How to write meta description
- About the number of characters
- About keywords
- If you can't write a good meta description
6. Summary
1. What is meta description?
Meta description provides an overview of the page and appears below the title in search results.
When only the title and URL are displayed in Google search results, it is impossible to know the page's content.
Therefore, we add a description that conveys the page's content and asks the user to connect to the page.
Although there is no direct effect on SEO, the keywords in the description will be displayed in bold if search keywords are included, thus attracting the user's attention and interest.
Therefore, when creating a page, it is recommended to write meta description to increase the click-through rate of users, although the SEO effect is not so significant.
2. What happens if you do not write meta description?
Search engines want to display description (snippet) relevant to search keywords in search results.
Therefore, if there is no text describing the page content, a snippet will be displayed in the search results based on the text on the page that the search engine determines the search keywords on its own.
Or, the search engine will display a description automatically generated by the search engine.
In this case, it may be challenging to tell users what the page is about because the text is unintelligible.
3. Reasons why meta description is not updated
The following are the main reasons why meta description is not updated in google search results. 1.
1. Google does not judge meta description as appropriate
It is not always the case that meta description will be updated in the search results.
If the search engine recognizes that the text does not describe the page content, it will be generated automatically.
Therefore, you should avoid writing anything in meta description unrelated to the page's content you are setting and avoid listing keywords.
If meta description does not reflect the page's content, check to see if the description of the page content is correct. 2.
2. Google does not recognize the change of meta description
Search engines cannot detect changes in page content in real-time. The crawler, a search engine robot, patrols the site to recognize the page content correctly.
Therefore, even if you include meta description, it will not be updated in the search results unless a crawler visits your site.
Suppose you did not include meta description when you published your page, and you added one later.
In that case, you need to increase the frequency of crawler visits by either requesting a crawl from Search Console, an analysis tool provided by Google, or increasing external links to your site for the search engines to recognize your site.
To increase the frequency of crawler visits, you need to increase the number of external links to your site.
When creating a page, it is best to write meta description at the time of publication, not to need to be set later.
Make sure you have written meta description before publishing the page.
3. Meta description is duplicated
If you are using WordPress to create and manage your site, you may be using a plugin, and many users may be using the ALL in ONE SEO plugin, which helps set meta descriptions.
However, some WordPress themes, such as Bloom and Cocoon, already have SEO by default.
The presence of multiple meta descriptions may be why your site is not displayed in search results, so please check to see if there are numerous meta descriptions in the source code.
We also recommend checking meta description settings in the theme you are using.
If it is not necessary, you may want to disable ALL in ONE SEO.
4. What to do if your meta description is not updated
Unfortunately, there is no way to ensure that the description is updated in the search results 100% reliably.
However, there is a way to de
al with the situation when meta description is not updated.
If your meta description is not being updated, first check the source code to make sure that meta description contains the text you have set.
If meta description contains the text you have set, likely, the search engine crawlers have not yet recognized the changes you have made, so you should submit a crawl request to Search Console so that they can visit your site.
There are cases where meta description is not changed even after waiting for a while.
The reason for this is that the search engine may have determined that the content described in meta description is not appropriate and changed the description in the search results.
In such cases, please create a new meta description in line with the page's content.
Even if meta description is appropriate, the search engines may omit the description if the text is too large. Please rewrite your description with that number of characters as a guide.
5. How to write meta description
The following summarizes helpful information to keep in mind when writing meta description.
About the number of characters
The number of characters in meta description should be about 150.
Still, it does not matter how many characters are used as long as they are less than 150 because if the number of characters is minimal, users who read the description may think, "If the description is small, the page content may also be small.
If the number of characters is minimal, users may believe that the page content is too small. Also, if the number of characters exceeds 150, search engines will omit it.
Furthermore, the number of characters displayed in the description differs between PC and smartphone screens.
It is about 150 characters for a PC screen, but it is about 120 characters for a smartphone screen.
Therefore, when writing meta description, it is necessary to write the content you want to convey to users in the first half of the description so that the second half can be omitted.
About keywords
Do not include an excessive number of keywords just because you aim to rank high for a particular keyword. Avoid using the exact keywords repeatedly or having multiple keywords that make the text incoherent.
Overstuffed keywords are not attractive to users when they read the description and may decrease the click-through rate or even make the site look suspicious.
If you can't write a good meta description
When thinking of text, the most important is what keywords you want users to use to access your site.
For example, if you're going to reach users searching for the keyword "SEO beginner how to," you need meta description that will attract users' attention searching for that keyword.
Think of meta description that will make the user think, "This page has the information I am looking for.
6. Summary
There is no way to ensure that meta description is updated in Google's search results.
However, you can increase the chances of reflecting your meta description by trying the reasons it is not remembered and the solutions described in this article.
To learn more about SEO, check out the post below.
