How to Write a WordPress Website Meta Description for SEO

The question is, how do you get started? The process of writing and setting your page’s keyword description is simple yet strategic.

We will go through the necessary steps to getting your home and inner page keyword description set for search engine ranking.

What is a Meta Description?

To begin, we have to first take a look at the methodology behind a meta description to understand its importance. Sourced from Google, here is the information they provide as a standard to writing your description.

Take a look at the article written by Google themselves to get a deep knowledge of meta description. In short, you have to write amazingly eye-catching and incentivized descriptions for your site to get user’s attention. With this information, we know that each page must have a meta description written to describe its contents.

Not only does each page need to be written out, but it must have unique and relative content that perfectly describes the page within the context of your business.

Home Page Description:

Here you can see the following descriptions for Nike that give you a great look into what the business is about along with what the page will pertain to.

About Page Description:

One thing to keep in mind is that Google will automatically fill the meta description of each page you do not fill out on your website. The contents of the description are automatically filled using any content Google can find at the beginning of your page.

Content may derive from menu links and contact information present in your top header bar depending on the setup of your theme. With this in mind, it is imperative to have each page description filled out on your website as soon as possible.

 Using Yoast SEO plugin

Fortunately, we are working with WordPress and only need to take a few easy steps to get the job done. Out of the millions of plugins within the WordPress marketplace, Yoast SEO plugin is a must-have within your arsenal of tools.

With Yoast SEO, you can easily set the descriptions for each page while benefiting from the excellent suggestions provided by the plugin.

Here you can see the plugin. Within each page will be this section for Yoast SEO which allows you to edit the snippet. To start, click on the “Edit snippet” button which will expand the necessary fields.

You can click and modify your meta description now with ease. The description and title box will have a bar that represents the recommended word count for the title and description. Yoast will signal with a green bar once you have the optimal amount of words in your description.

While typing your meta description, the bar will expand and turn from orange to green depending on your word count. If you do not have enough content or too much content, the bar will be orange. Having a word count of around 155 will render a green bar to confirm you have the optimal amount of content to describe your page.

Now that you have written your first description you can start filling out the descriptions for your inner pages. If you have blogs or products you might want to let them inherit the description from the content of the page. For the main inner pages such as About, Contact, and Support you must have unique meta description content. This will allow users to easily reach your website in search engines.

Writing your descriptions

The goal for writing great descriptions is to give users a well-written representation of the link shown in the search results. If you do not write out the descriptions for your pages, Yoast will automatically default your Meta descriptions as content sourced from the top portion of the page. If this happens, your audience may not be able to find your website when searching for specific pages or services.

With well-written descriptions, your audience will have an easy way of finding what they need on your website. Google will then start to boost your score in the ranking system.  As your organic traffic grows, the trust factor on your domain will also grow. This will further improve your overall site score and rank.

The important factor to remember is to write original and exciting descriptions for every single page. Doing the hard work, in the beginning, will prove to be successful in little to no time. Exposure of your business within the search engines will improve while contributing to the growth of your overall user base.