There are many opinions about best practices for writing meta descriptions, while many have given up on them entirely because Google rewrites so many of them. What may be useful is an update to best practices in a way that better aligns with the realities of search and the tools we have today.
The goal here isn’t just to keep Google from rewriting meta descriptions. The goal is to maximize the opportunity for controlling Google’s snippets in order to improve click-through rates by showing the best information.
There are two sources of ground truth to consider for understanding meta descriptions.
- Google’s guidelines for meta descriptions.
- The official HTML standards by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C).
What Google Recommends
Google has multiple help pages about meta descriptions dating back to 2007 that are still relevant and offer granular details.
Here are some takeaways.
1. “We want snippets to accurately represent the web result.”
Meta descriptions must accurately represent the web page so that users know what it’s about. This is really simple, but many SEOs get it wrong all the time, all day long. The standard SEO procedure is to use keywords here, and that’s 100% the wrong approach.
The average SEO will stamp their feet and insist that keywords belong in meta descriptions because they’re bolded in the search results. But that argument falls apart like wet toilet paper because web pages in the real world rank for keyword variations, and that’s been the reality for about twenty years. That argument makes even less sense in the age of AI, where users are talking to Search in natural language.
People don’t search with keywordese anymore, so your meta description should transition to accurately saying what the web page is about. Full stop.
2. “Differentiate the descriptions for different pages.”
This means don’t use boilerplate. This means don’t waste the meta description with branding or a “click here to visit” call to action across all pages. Circling back to the purpose of meta descriptions, describe the page so that users know what to expect, period.
3. “Include structured data about the page.”
It’s easy to confuse the phrase “structured data” with Schema structured data. They are actually two different things depending on the context. In this context Google is referring to structured data that are facts about products. Google says that meta descriptions do not have to be in sentence form.
They use the example of a meta description for a Harry Potter book:
“Author: J. K. Rowling, Illustrator: Mary GrandPré, Category: Books, Price: $17.99, Length: 784 pages”
The above meta description matches the example used in the current version of their meta description best practices:
“Written by A.N. Author, Illustrated by V. Gogh, Price: $17.99, Length: 784 pages”
Google’s latest guideline recommends virtually the exact same thing:
“The meta description doesn’t just have to be in sentence…
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