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What do I need to look out for in my meta description?
Where can I find the meta description?
Why is the meta description important for SEO?
What do I need to pay attention to in my meta description?
In principle, the meta description can be as long as you like. However, search engines such as Google will cut it off with "..." above a certain length. That is why values such as 70-156 characters or 400-928px are recommended as the maximum length for the description. The pixel specification is because letters in the font that Google uses in the search results do not all have the same width as in the monospace font, for example. A text consisting of many wide letters cannot be as long as a text consisting of many narrow letters. If in doubt, you should therefore stick to the pixel width. Here you can see a meta description on Google that is too long:
Where can I find the meta description?
You will not find it on the visible page. However, if you right-click on the page, a context menu will appear. Depending on the browser, the selection point is labeled differently, but for Chrome and Firefox the term is "Show page source text". You can also access this via "Ctrl + U".
You will now see the HTML code that makes up the page. At the top is the head area. Here you will find the meta description:
In a SERP snippet (search result snippet) from all major search engines (Google, Bing, Yahoo, Baidu, Yandex) you will find the description as gray or black text, usually 2 lines, below the title and the URL, see image.
Why is the description important for SEO?
Searchers enter search terms, i.e. keywords, into search engines. They want to find information on these keywords. Imagine you search for "coffee" and get a search result that looks like this
and directly below it one that does not contain the word "coffee" anywhere.
Which result is more relevant for you?
It's no different for Google and co. If the keyword does not appear in the short description or summary, then the rest of the content will probably not deal with this keyword or topic. Consequently, the page will not rank as well for this keyword as other pages. The meta description also shows the searcher whether this page corresponds to their search intention: Do they only want a definition? Do they want more information? Do they want to buy or compare prices? Do they need service or help? With the meta description, website operators can describe exactly which need the page covers. Here is a description for the intention"information search"
And here is a description that serves the purchase intention
The meta description is therefore not used as another place to place a keyword, but rather to make it easier for visitors to get started.
In SEO, there is the term CTR (Click Through Rate). It shows how often a particular search result is clicked on. The higher the CTR, the better, because the more this search result has encouraged searchers to click on it. Traffic increases, and possibly also sales.
Further information on https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meta-Element#Beispiele
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