In time, everything around us changes, from the things we do to the things we use. Or, even the things we work on as well. In SEO, it seems times have changed too. Back in the day, when it came to SEO, the meta description was one of those things that many of us put a good amount of effort into, along with URL, H1s and titles. Now, we’re putting most of our time into page content, some meta tag efforts, and finally some link building efforts.
To put it simply, the meta description pretty much serves as part of your ad copy when it comes to search engine results. Every page should have one. But, it ultimately doesn’t play a direct part in increasing your ranking. On the other side of the coin though, it is still important in helping drive traffic to your site. This is because when somebody finds your link on the search results page, one of the things they look at is that little description below the links.
By having a good meta description, you’re more likely to get clicked on by somebody on a results page. As Andy MacLean says in his article, Our Forgotten Friend, The Meta Description, “the better the meta description, the higher the clickthrough rate and the more traffic your site will get.”
There is more too! Andy has some good information in his article for those who want to improve on your meta descriptions. You can check them out by following the link below to learn more about meta descriptions:
http://moz.com/ugc/our-forgotten-friend-the-meta-description