How long can meta descriptions be

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. Large websites often have thousands or millions of pages that will never drive significant volumes of natural search traffic.

Think about your privacy policy — how many organic visitors do you get there? It is a waste of time to manually — or even programmatically — maintain meta descriptions on webpages that have no potential to rank. Remember that all content requires future maintenance. It would be far better to have no meta description than a poor or outdated one.

Your homepage is probably your most critical webpage, so the homepage deserves a great meta description. Many homepages are navigational in nature, have more imagery and design elements, and less paragraph text compared to other pages on-site meaning the need for a meta description is increased. The less text on a page, the more likely it is to need a meta description. If you manage the website for a known brand, the homepage meta description offers a chance to influence the perception of the company directly on the search results page.

If your website exists to help your organization make sales, your product and category pages are likely the most critical pages on your site for serving late-stage prospect interest. These are the most important pages to get right. These are certainly worth spending your time fine-tuning as much as possible.

Best practice in , is the same as in — keep it from to characters. To check your meta descriptions, use the counter tool above. On mobile devices, the max limit is about pixels and characters. Google shows up to pixels on a desktop. You can check it with SERP preview tool. Do you want to know more? Read our complex guide about meta description.