One of the things you can do to get ranked on Google and get more clicks is to change your “meta description” text.

Your “meta description” text no longer counts for SEO purposes, but it’s what people see under your title in the search results.

What I just learned today, is that after 155 characters, it will get cut off. What you want is a well written description along with a “call to action” that gets the searcher to click on your link, not someone else’s.

In a survey reported in the SEmoz newsletter you can see only 34% of all companies are doing this correctly!  They either don’t even have a “meta description” or it’s too short or too long.

To see the complete article, go here.

Getting ranked high on the search results is only step one – then you need to make people want to click your link!

What you put in your meta description is for that purpose and that purpose only.  It does you no good for SEO, but can do you a lot of good with the real people who see your listing!

So, make sure to include a call to action and give people to click your link.  Offering something free can be good.  Think of it like a classified ad in a newspaper where you only have a set number of characters/spaces.

Write your meta description as though it was an ad, because that’s what it is!

If you have a WordPress blog, it’s easy to fix – just go to your admin login and look for the section called, you guessed it, “meta description”.

Any easy way to count characters is by using Word, Pages or any other editor that does it for you.  That way, you optimize your use of the available space.

It’s amazing to me that only 34% of the listings that show up in search do this right.  If you do, you can leapfrog over your competitors.  This is a lot easier to fix than page authority, quality backlinks or any other issues to get you ranked higher – at the end of the day, it’s all about clicks and leads.

The best training for learning all this stuff is here.  Or, get ranked on Google and get more clicks the easy way by calling me and I’ll do it for you!  720-890-8760.

Please “like” this post on Facebook, Google + or Tweet it if you find this info helpful!  I will stop posting this “geeky” stuff if no one wants it;)

 

Tags: online marketing, search engines, SEO, web marketing