How long meta descriptions should be

She's as curious as she can be; constantly hunting for answers to her questions, never saying no to new experiences. Look no further! This is the only SEO suite you will ever need. Give them a try below:. I highly recommend that you give this tool a try! Subscribe and receive exclusive insider tips and tricks on SEO. All Rights Reserved. Steph W. We rank high, you can too. Keep yourself reminded on the best practices for writing title and meta descriptions.

Not just the length. Discover all the do's and don'ts to make sure you craft the perfect meta description. Google only shows 54 characters of this title, and truncate the rest of it. Google displays the entire title on the search results, which has 63 characters. Currently, the title displayed on mobile has 72 characters, and meta descriptions have characters, which are longer than previously.

The same blog post; but Google only displayed 69 characters of the title and characters of the meta description. Related Articles. You can focus on delivering audience-centric content. You can convince your readers to take action. You can discover untapped keyword opportunities.

You can see competitor's winning keywords. The search engine can also perceive such descriptions as spam and will negatively impact the rating of the resource. As a result, the CTR value will decrease. This leads to a decrease in the average rating. If your text is a couple of characters longer than symbols, do not waste your time on shortening. Rather take care of other important aspects that should be taken into consideration while writing meta descriptions.

If you take note of all the recommendations from Google and take into account all the guidelines provided during filling in of the snippet Yoast SEO in WordPress, it is possible to make a list of criteria of an ideal meta description.

The structure of the optimum meta description is the following:. The ideal meta description length is symbols with spaces. Let us consider several examples of quality meta descriptions. In this example, the length is precisely symbols with spaces, there are keywords, the brand name, and a very concise description of the company activity. Even though there is no specific call-to-action, it is clear who the target audience of this selling proposition is.

Uber webmasters have managed to squeeze in keywords, range of services the company provides, and a call-to-action in just characters. These are the two examples of ineffective meta descriptions.

Even though the meta description is completely included in the snippet, simply mentioning the cities or keywords is not one of the meta description best practices.

It is an illustrative example of how Google has taken the information from the site to generate the snippet based on the search. As a result, this is not a description but a list of phrases and fragments. Before adding meta tags, you can check if they are going to be displayed correctly in the search results.

You can do this by using special tools. Fill in all the fields and you will immediately see the results. To the Web. This is a free tool that not only helps to see how the snippet is going to be displayed but also provides brief feedback on every meta tag. If it meets the optimum parameters, it should be modified.

Meta Length Checker. This service reminds you that a snippet is like a shop window. It has to be attractive in order to increase CTR. Counting Characters. This meta description length tool cuts the description to symbols.

However, there is recent information on the page about meta description best practices that will help with the creation of correct meta tags. To conclude, we would like to underline once again that Google has always preferred authentic quality content. No matter how the snippet size has changed, it does not influence the rules of meta description creation.

It still needs to interest users to click on the link. Try not to forget about the meta description character limit. This is how it looks: In , Google announced that search robots do not take meta descriptions into account when ranking websites.

Otherwise, users will see something like this: In the article about How to Build a Nice Meta Description , we described in detail what meta descriptions are, what they influence, and how to create an effective text to increase CTR.

Twitter Nevertheless, every SEO specialist wants important information to be displayed under the site name in its full volume. How has the Meta Description Length Changed? Twitter The displayed meta description length varies within the following values: For desktop — symbols with spaces.

For mobile gadgets — symbols with spaces. Here is a five-step breakdown, based on recommendations and suggestions Google has stated in its webmaster guidelines, of how to write effective descriptions that will help grow your CTR from your listings on the SERPs and become an expert at SEO.

The primary concern for a quality description is always accuracy. The summary should correctly describe the content and provide motivation for users to click this particular link. Keep in mind that just like the rest of your content, keyword stuffing or using only lists of keywords provides little context or helpful information for the user.

This creates a poor user experience and will not encourage clicks. Meta descriptions should be snippets of high-quality content. Put the most important text near the beginning of the description tag. Google does not set character limits for meta description length, but it does limit the number of characters displayed to users on the SERP.

Best practice is to keep meta description length between characters. This ensures your entire description will appear on both desktop and mobile. Since meta descriptions do not always get displayed to users, site owners have the tendency to overlook their importance.

Particularly now since the DMOZ will no longer have a role in the process, brands should make sure that every page has a unique, quality description, particularly for pages that have no text on them. The same description should not be used across multiple pages of the website. Each page of content offers something different for the user, and thus the meta description should be similarly unique and articulate to what makes the page important and relevant.

Think of the description as the body copy in a search ad.