Guidelines: Things You Should Know About New Meta Description In 2018

Around the end of the year 2017, the SEOs have observed a sudden increase in the meta description length that went much higher than the previous 155 characters in length. Their meta title length also went as long as 70 characters. For eager digital marketers and SEOs, this change brought a great sense of relief as they found enough room to pack targeted keywords into the meta description without making it look stuffy and forced. Google even announced that they are likely to increase the length of meta description in 2018 to help the audience to understand the relevance of the pages appearing on the search results. So, if you want to rank your website better, increase the length of your meta description and meta title in 2018.

How Long A Meta Description in 2018 Should Be

It is now up to the SEO experts to decide if they want to change the length of their meta description in 2018. If you take suggestions from the experts about the length of meta description, Moz is recommending the SEOs to increase the length, but Search Engine Land has a different view. Yoast has already updated their plugin for longer meta description. If you want to up your game as an SEO, you have to make use of every opportunity you get ahead in the competition and by increasing the meta description, you get an opportunity to improve the search engine rates.

By balancing the facts, we recommend that the new meta description rate should not be more than 320 characters. To do it that way, keep the target range 280 to 300 characters long. After increasing the meta description length, the SEOs have been getting some click-through results.

What About The Search Snippets On Mobiles

The mobile search snippets are usually shorter and the description is in between 110 to 120 characters. The SEOs haven’t observed any significant changes. If the large section of your traffic comes from your mobile, make sure to write the meta description within the said range.

Why The Search Snippets Are Not The Same Length

If your snippets are too long, Google will cut it up to fill the available space. According to Moz, the bulk of snippets that are cut off by Google are generally in between 275 to 350 characters.

If Google is rewriting your meta description for display snippets, be sure that you can’t stop Google from doing it. But you can take these two steps to reduce the risk of Google-generated meta description rewriting –

• Ensure that your meta descriptions are not too short.
• Ensure that the meta description you wrote is descriptive enough.

There are many large websites available on the Internet that do not use meta descriptions at all and Google generates snippets for these websites. But if you can write an interesting meta description which acts as a traffic magnet, it is going to benefit the SEO effect.

Things To Remember While Writing Meta Descriptions

• Provide adequate information that can attract users.
• Avoid over-informing your users.
• Always pack your primary keyword as naturally as possible.
• Try to provide the most important information on the first 120 characters. Keep this information in your attention, if you wish to generate traffic from mobile as well.

Closing Thoughts

As you have twice of the length of meta descriptions in 2018, make sure to take advantage of this new length while writing meta descriptions in future. However, you needn’t change your old web pages in a jiffy. Remember these points mentioned and modify it accordingly to give your users a reason to click on the link to your website.