Meta description how long

Bolding keywords is a way for Google and Bing to indicate the relevance between the search keywords and the results, therefore it's important to use the most important keywords in the description. Using the most important keywords in the meta description not directly influences your rankings, although it has an interesting indirect impact: when visitors see bolded keywords in results they tend to click on those results more.

This increases your click through rate CTR , which in turns plays a role in determining the rank for your page. A high CTR is seen by search engines as a signal that a page is very relevant for a query. Please note that search engines can be stubborn. Regardless of the changes you make sometimes they'll ignore your meta description.

If that happens, just change the meta description from time to time and see if it gets picked up by search engines. Visitors need encouragement for them to convert. Often it's as simple as asking them to take action. On websites this is usually done with micro-copy and buttons that stand out and contain a message that influence a visitor to buy a product, send an e-mail or leave their phone number. When it comes to meta descriptions it's important to ask a visitor to take action.

Take another look at the Apple iPad 4 mini example: "Buy online, or visit an Apple store today". People are told to buy the iPad 4 online, or either go to a physical store to make the purchase. That's a pretty good CTA right there. Incorporating a CTA is one, but it's just as important to communicate why a user should a visitor should take action.

In Apple's example this is supported by stating that the iPad mini 4 is available in Silver, Gold or Space Grey, and that you can also choose for different storage sizes. Apple communicates the benefit of choice here. As with the title tag, there's no perfect length for the meta description either. The same parameters play a role: there are different search engines, different operating systems and different devices.

And if your meta description is not too long or too short, there's still no guarantee the search engines displays it. Don't panic though, below we explain how you improve your chances of search engines using your meta description in the SERPs.

Regardless of the search engine, in each SERP there's limited amount of space for the meta description. Google however advises to use a maximum amount of pixels. This makes sense considering this is more accurate than characters. For instance, it takes into consideration that a character such as "P" takes up much more space than "l". The meta description takes up four lines in the search engine listing, so in theory you have 2, pixels of space.

Taking into account bolding of keywords, the fact that Google rarely if at all let us use these 2. This generally translates to characters. Make sure your meta descriptions aren't too short either!

In this case, Google may produce a description of their own. In order to prevent this as much as possible, make sure your meta description tag is at least 70 characters, or pixels long. Please note that Google's tablet and mobile versions have a greater maximum width for the meta description, however it's not possible to set specific meta descriptions for different devices, so we recommend to stick to the maximum width for desktop to make sure the meta description adheres to Google's constraints as much as possible.

Bing,Yahoo and DuckDuckGo don't have different rules per device regarding the maximum length of the meta description. Bing opens in a new tab advises to use a maximum meta description length of characters. Our own research has shown that meta descriptions with or more characters are often cut-off in Bing, so we advise to keep it to a maximum of characters when you're optimizing for Bing specifically.

Yahoo does not give much advice in their Help section opens in a new tab about the minimum and maximum length of the meta description. Since the meta description consists of two lines, this roughly translates to characters. However, we haven't seen this full width being used, nor have we seen meta descriptions with this many characters being displayed. In practice a significant amount of meta descriptions tags above characters are truncated so we advise you to stick to a maximum amount of characters.

Although DuckDuckGo is not very informative about their advice on how to optimize pages for their search engine, our research has shown that when you stick to a maximum of characters you should be safe.

Our advice regarding the minimum amount of characters for DuckDuckGo is: 70 characters. In order for search engines and users to be able to distinguish between pages, it's vital that each indexable page has a unique meta description. Both search engines and users may think that pages are duplicates of one another if they contain the same meta description. Duplicate meta descriptions appearing on multiple website pages is commonly the result of website owner laziness or corner cutting.

We all know duplicate content is a frowned upon by the search engines and this is likewise true when it comes to descriptions. Sometimes meta descriptions are auto-generated by a CMS or plugin and then overlooked or disregarded. However, many plugins also make recommendations to fix them. If this all sounds familiar, take the time to review and optimize based on those suggestions. Stuffing the same or very similar keywords into webpage content is an understood SEO no-no and the same goes for meta descriptions.

It is good to incorporate a primary keyword or phrase into your page description for consistency with your page title and potentially your URL which Google will often highlight in the search result.

But it is not advisable and will be obvious if you have multiple variations of the same keyword crammed into a character sentence. This will likely have the same rank debilitating effect as non-aligned or duplicate descriptions. As noted, meta descriptions have a dual role of describing a webpage and engaging your desired audience via the search engine results.

Tell me why I need it and how I can buy it. If you are able to fully describe the content and context of your page and still have room to add a call to action, you should.

Here are some other best practices for writing good meta descriptions:. Think of your meta description as a short advertisement for this page - write the enticing text that will make users want to click on your site's listing.

Meta descriptions should be natural-sounding, human-readable, and in sentence form. Try to anticipate what the user is hoping to find on the page and include this in the meta description.

Be sure to include targeted keywords in the meta description, since the user's query usually appears in bold on the SERP snippet. Do not stuff the meta description with an excessive amount of keywords. Avoid using double quotes or other non-alphanumeric characters in the text, as these can sometimes cause search engines to truncate content after these characters. How has the Meta Description Length Changed? Twitter The displayed meta description length varies within the following values: For desktop — symbols with spaces.

For mobile gadgets — symbols with spaces. How to Write a Meta Description of High Quality If you take note of all the recommendations from Google and take into account all the guidelines provided during filling in of the snippet Yoast SEO in WordPress, it is possible to make a list of criteria of an ideal meta description.

Focus on the content. Make sure that the meta description is unique, does not duplicate the title, corresponds to the information on the page, and contains data that will ensure users to click on the link. These can be the advantages of the company or its product. Read more in detail in the article about Title Tags. Do not forget about the length. Yoast SEO helps select the optimum option.

If the description is too short less than symbols or too long more than symbols , the bullet corresponding to this parameter will be orange. If everything is fine, it will be green.

These rules are applicable to WordPress sites along with many others. Yoast Following the same principle, Yoast SEO helps us understand why the meta description should contain keywords. Place them at the beginning of the text to avoid Google cutting important information. The availability of keywords increases the chance that the meta description will be displayed in the snippet. Do not misuse keywords. Just 1 or 2 will suffice.

The structure of the optimum meta description is the following: Key phrases should be included in the first symbols of the description. Triggers or a unique selling proposition should be used.

Mention the target audience or use a call-to-action. It is even possible to indicate phone numbers and other contact details. Tesla In this example, the length is precisely symbols with spaces, there are keywords, the brand name, and a very concise description of the company activity. Uber Uber webmasters have managed to squeeze in keywords, range of services the company provides, and a call-to-action in just characters. Radio Cab Even though the meta description is completely included in the snippet, simply mentioning the cities or keywords is not one of the meta description best practices.

America Car Rental It is an illustrative example of how Google has taken the information from the site to generate the snippet based on the search. Useful Meta Description Length Checkers Before adding meta tags, you can check if they are going to be displayed correctly in the search results.

To the Web To the Web This is a free tool that not only helps to see how the snippet is going to be displayed but also provides brief feedback on every meta tag.