Meta description popular opinion

leechesBleechin

leechesBleechin

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I'm hearing more and more people suggesting you shouldn't add any meta description to articles anymore and to let google populate it instead. Some even go as far as to say the same for meta titles. What's your opinion on this? Are they just parroting or is there something to it?
 
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For meta titles, Google will do use the website h1 most likely which can be changed depends on the searched keyword,
For me, it's a must and an important factor for the website/page on-page & not to mention that you'll have a better one written than you rather than some picked by the AI and could make a total nonsense in some of the cases,
It's true that Google does change the shown meta descriptions in SERPs in many cases, but it's not always the case and when it's not, I would rather have a manually written one that would attract visitors & boost the CTR and not the 1st text included (which can be messed up sometimes)
 
Not using meta title is practically suicide in any competitive niche. With the description is a bit more complicated, but the simple answer is still add the best one you can think off, despite the fact that Google may show a different one from time to time.
 
Write a meta description with your focus keyword in it, even if google will change it. I didn't add meta description and my CTR in search console was <2% last week i changed all metas and send them to re-index now my CTR is over 3%.
 
If you want the AI picking your titles and descriptions then leave it to Google. The main objective behind the description is to increase the CTR - you should be able to write a more compelling CTA than the AI.
 
So what if google actually rewrites the snippet on search, we don't know if they use the meta description to actually help with that along with the article...
With a wordpress plugin you can take a snippet of text from the article, or put your own in, but if your building your own site, it means labelling every page correctly.
 
Always write meta descriptions. Always.

If Google's AI thinks there's a better snippet which it can use for the meta description in SERPs, fine. It's not in your control.

That does not mean you should always let Google decide what your content is about.

I have found a number of time the auto-generated descriptions going haywire.
 
Google does a good job at picking meta from the content these days.
Adding them manually is always better.
 
Google's algorithm rewrites meta descriptions based on the relationship between the search query and the web page content. Or using poor meta that doesn't summarize the web page. Or to accurately match the search query with the web page, that are missing.
Metadata can let the visitor know what you offer, Google's algorithm understand whether the contents of your website is relevant and valuable for your visitor.
A meta description tag can make the site Cathy, and have greater influence in ranking a site.
 
leechesBleechin said:
I'm hearing more and more people suggesting you shouldn't add any meta description to articles anymore and to let google populate it instead. Some even go as far as to say the same for meta titles. What's your opinion on this? Are they just parroting or is there something to it?
Click to expand...
Meta tags are important too.
It has an impact on how your site appears in the SERPs and how many people will be willing to click through to your website.
It helps to improve SEO rankings and traffic of your site.
Improper usage of them may affect your ranks negatively.
 
I normally take the top G ads content for my focus keyword and use a combination of the them. This gets you the best CTR as companies have already split tested.
 
I would be happy to forget about creating an elegant Title and Description for every page that I want to rank, as we all more or less lazy, but meta title is still one of the most important factors of internal optimization, while meta description is a chance for you to show the right snippet to your potential/reader/customer. Yes, Google not always shows the snippet that you want and creates its' own. But still it is not a reason to leave metatags out of consideration
 
Meta description is shown by the search engine as description text in the search result. It help user to take action. So, always write meta description which satisfy the question asked by searchers. It helps you to increase CTR.
 
A meta description (sometimes called a meta description attribute or tag) is an HTML element that describes and summarizes the contents of your page for the benefit of users and search engines.
 
If you see the SERPS as a list of ads, then see the meta description as your ad copy (to make users click Tru)... Would you pay for an ad without using any copy?
If you want to have control on this aspect... I would always use a custom meta description for every page and give users a good reason to click tru....
 
Google A/B tests your metas and comes back with a binary response:
1.) your meta leads to more clicks = your meta get used
2.) their meta leads to more clicks = your meta goes to the bin

New sites will often have google generated/chosen meta until their authority goes up, then your meta is more likely to be the default and the above process gets skipped.
 
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