- Hi there!
I'm Corey with HubSpot Academy.
In this video we're going to cover
writing effective meta descriptions
and link texts for SEO.
But before we get started,
don't forget to hit that thumbs up button
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from HubSpot Academy.
Ready to get started?
Let's kick things off by talking about meta descriptions.
When you conduct a search,
how do you decide which result to click on?
The page title and the meta description
probably play huge roles in deciding
that a resource is helpful to you.
A meta description is an HTML attribute
that provides a brief summary of a webpage.
This brief snippet of text appears below the blue link
in a search engine result.
This description summarizes the content of the webpage
linked above it.
And although it's not an official ranking factor
in the Google search engine results,
it can be edited to help people understand
what the webpage is all about,
which encourages them to click through.
Take a look at this meta description example.
Best Buy sells appliances and electronics.
In this example, the meta description reads:
Shop for washers and dryers at BestBuy.com
and find deals on the top brands,
from stacked units and front loaders
to traditional washers and dryers.
This meta description describes exactly
what you'll see when clicking their link.
Washers and dryers available for purchase.
There are three reasons why you need a meta description.
A meta description increases clickthrough rates
and visits from organic search.
A meta description gives the right people
the right information at the right time.
And a meta description increases visits from social.
Let's dig into each one of these.
There might be 10 links per search engine results page
but they don't all get clicked equally.
In fact, people are more likely
to click results that higher up on the page.
For example, the number one organic result spot
is 10 times more likely to receive a click
than the number 10 spot.
To get your result to rank well, however,
you need people to start clicking on it.
Meta descriptions entice people to click on your link
instead of someone else's.
Great meta descriptions can be powerful enough
to get people to click on your link
even if you are below another search result.
A meta description gives the right people
the right information at the right time.
Although meta descriptions don't directly influence
your website's rank on Google,
they can benefit you when people conduct an advanced search.
An advanced search allows people to specify
or exclude terms in the search results.
There are a ton of advanced search options.
In explicit phrase, you can use quotes
around the word that you want to appear.
To exclude words, add minus sign
before the word that you want to exclude.
You can also add OR in all caps
to view results for multiple search terms.
This is why you wanna get very specific
when writing your meta descriptions.
If your page content has specific words
or phrases that people are searching for,
you'll want to make sure that they're included
in your meta descriptions.
Google isn't the only website that displays
your meta description when you publish a piece of content.
Social networks, like Facebook,
use what's called Open Graph to present
the most important data on your webpage
when you share it with your followers.
The Open Graph includes a meta description.
People on social media can see your meta description too.
This example shows the meta description
for a post, sharing a link
to the Only In Your State website on Facebook.
The meta description for this page is:
These 5 Trails In Massachusetts Will Lead You
To Extraordinary Ancient Ruins.
And it appears at the bottom of the Facebook post.
Your meta description doesn't just drive
search engine traffic,
it drives social media traffic too.
Now that you know why you need a meta description,
here's how to write an effective one.
You're going to want to write compelling content,
include one or two keywords,
aim for 155 to 160 characters
and avoid non-alphanumeric characters.
First, you're gonna wanna spend some time
writing compelling content.
This should be a short sentence previewing the content
or telling the searcher why they should give
your post a read.
Give them a clear benefit of clicking through
and reading your post if necessary.
When writing your meta description,
be informative and then add value.
The meta description is your chance
to convey the value of your page to your viewers.
Here's what an effective meta description could look like.
This meta description clearly describes
the contents of the webpage and compels the viewer
to click by describing exactly what the user will learn.
You might already include keywords
in your webpage's body copy and the title
but the meta description should also include keywords
that help describe the content of the webpage.
Keywords in your meta description optimize
your content to match with related search queries.
Focus on one or two unique keywords
in the meta description for each page.
You don't wanna stuff keywords anywhere that you can.
Make sure that they fit naturally
and help explain what people can expect to see
if they click on your link.
In our example, this search engine result uses one keyword
in both the title and the meta description,
responsive web design.
Next, aim for 155 to 160 characters in your description.
The number of characters
that make up your meta description is important.
But when actually displaying this meta description,
Google doesn't measure by characters,
it measures by pixels.
Your meta description will be cut off
if it becomes too long.
That's why you should aim for 155 to 160 characters
in your meta description as a good benchmark.
If you take a look back at our example,
this meta description contains 156 characters
and it is not cut off in the search engine results pages.
Special characters might appear
just fine on your computer screen
but search engines can't read those symbols very easily.
These are known as non-alphanumeric characters.
Avoid using special characters like plus signs
and em-dashes in your meta descriptions.
Special characters often don't appear in search results
as you intended and they may be removed altogether.
This meta description doesn't contain any special characters
so each word is displayed correctly
in the search engine results pages.
Want to test out how your meta descriptions will look
before setting them live?
Well, check out the snippet optimizer tool
in the resources.
Depending on the CMS that you're using,
there will be different methods
for editing your meta description.
And some solutions are more technical than others.
If you're suing WordPress, the Yoast SEO
is the go-to SEO solution.
All you have to do is log in to your WordPress dashboard,
click on your posts, and edit your description.
Other CMSs including Wix, Squarespace
and the HubSpot CMS Hub,
have an easy solution within the CMS itself.
No plug-in required.
In your CMS, look for a page or a post setting
that allows you to edit the meta description.
And for the technical marketers out there,
your meta description can also be edited
within the HTML of your individual page
by editing the meta description field.
Regardless of the solution that works for you,
having a well-written meta description
will help improve your rankings in search engines
and drive traffic to your webpage.
On a webpage, descriptive link text is important
for your SEO performance.
Link description is the clickable word
or words in hyperlink.
Link descriptions help users and search engines
better understand your content.
Search engines will be better able
to understand the purpose of your links
and the hierarchy of the post.
And people will be more inclined
to click a link that directly explains
where the destination is.
Let's take a look at an example link description
from the HubSpot Blog.
Look at the blue hyperlink.
This link description reads social media content marketing.
When you click on the link,
you're taken to the link destination
which is the ultimate guide to social media marketing.
The link description perfectly describes
the content of the destination page.
So what does a bad link look like?
Generic words like click here or learn more
is not an effective link description.
Google suggests these link descriptions best practices.
First, stay on topic.
Don't use text that has no relation to the page's content.
Don't use page URLs as link description,
unless you have a very good reason to do so,
such as referencing a site's new address.
Keep descriptions concise.
Aim for a few words or a short phrase.
And also format links so that they're easy to spot.
Let's take a look at some link descriptions
in the page's HTML.
On the left, you see a bad link description.
The link description, click here,
is not specific to the blog post on website optimization.
On the right, there's a good link description.
Using the keyword website optimization
as the link description makes it clear
that the link is about that topic.
In this example, replacing the click here link description
with the keyword website optimization
is a much better experience.
It's a small change but this effort really impacts
your page's ranking and experience.
So how do you edit link descriptions?
This one's pretty easy.
They can be edited directly in your HTML,
just like in the examples we just covered.
But no matter which CMS you're using
to publish your content online,
it is as simple as hyperlinking keywords
by pressing Command + K or by clicking the hyperlink icon.
With meta descriptions and link descriptions in place,
you'll see better performance on search engines
and deliver a better experience to your website visitors.
To learn more about how to create high-performing websites
that drive traffic and convert leads,
check out HubSpot Academy's free course
on website optimization.