It was in the November of 2017 that many SEO experts saw the extended length of Google snippet in search results till on 1^st December 2017 the official update was announced by Search Engine Land that Google has updated its Meta description length from 165 characters to 320 characters. The 165 characters Meta description limit was limiting marketers and content writers since the very inception of it. But now that Google has finally gone on to increase the same writers and marketers would get to have more opportunity to express themselves and allure their readers with better and more elaborate content information. According to a top Google spokesperson, the recent change was made in order to provide further useful and descriptive snippets for aiding people better comprehend how pages are relevant to the searches they are making. Now, with the Meta descriptions length increasing SEO experts and content marketers are revisiting Meta descriptions with an effort to understand how this update may go on to affect or impact their content and its ranking.

An Overview Of The Meta Description Tag– Meta description tags are snippets used for summarizing the content of a page on search engines. These days with the intelligent ranking of RankBrain web crawlers are scanning content with greater relevance. The top SEO providers holds the opinion that adding meta description with targeted keywords can positively influence the ranking on Search Engine Result Page (SERP). Moreover, meta descriptions assume great significance in boosting the click-through rate.

Importance Of Meta Description Tag In SEO– Being well acquainted with Meta descriptions is mandatory for improving visibility on search engines and get more number of clicks. Writing Meta descriptions that is informative and consisting of the relevant keywords can definitely aid in fetching more visibility and boosted click-through rate. The keywords appear in bold in Meta descriptions and easily catches the eye of the audience and helps the search bots as well. Thus, there is simply no denying the fact that the increase in length of Meta Descriptions would facilitate both SEO heads and content marketers write meta descriptions that is highly SEO friendly and thereby improve the SEO naturally.

What The Increase Of Meta Description Length Would Mean For SEO Experts

• Better Chance To Boost Click-Through Rate– It is a well-known fact that informative content displaying the summary of content within the limited characters is amongst one of the sure shot ways to more clicks than sites that are positioned above you in terms of organic ranking. Now with the increase in the length of Meta descriptions SEO heads and content marketers get more room to incorporate a richer and more informative Meta description to show their content relevancy. Again, this could also well boost the click-through rate of the page as well. And it is again a well-established fact that Google gives greater importance and higher rankings to pages having higher CTR. Hence, writing a meta description summing up the summary of the page with in 320 characters including keywords, useful links, contact information, USP, call-to-action, etc. is just a fantastic way to get more clicks leading to higher ranking.

• Greater Space For Accommodating More Keywords– Keywords definitely happens to be one of the basic strategies to boost any SEO page. When the targeted keywords are added in the meta description, it not only elevates the chances of marketers to climb up the ladder of search engines. And with the length of meta descriptions increasing, more keywords can be included in the meta description now.

• Review Meta Description Of Top Pages To Keep Rank- Barring adding keywords and making the content more informative & descriptive, SEO experts also need to review meta description of top ranking pages that have great traffic inflow into it. Although the algorithm of Google are designed in such a fashion that they would be extracting the snippet of content for meta description, still for avoiding risk of being pushed down the ranking ladder, it is highly recommended to review and improve the meta description of top pages.

• More Room For Including LSI Keywords– Another great benefit that can be derived by SEO experts and content marketers with the increase in length of meta descriptions is that they get more space for adding Latent Semantic Indexing Keywords (LSI keywords). LSI keywords are the ones that include the synonyms of the focus keyword or the related keyword. There are various tools like Google Keyword Planner and others that can assist in finding LSI keywords to be incorporated in meta descriptions for getting a higher ranking.

Google’s aim was to give marketers and SEO experts more freedom in expressing themselves with the increase of the length of meta description. But this has made many marketers and SEO heads confused as they are in a fix whether to keep their meta data as it is or update it as per the newly framed guideline. It is not possible to change the meta data of every page, nor is it necessary to do that. What SEO heads and marketers can do is that they can increase the length of meta descriptions written for the top ranking pages receiving organic traffic.

SEO experts and marketers are indeed revisiting their meta descriptions for including more keywords and even more informative and descriptive content for boosting the click-through rate and improving the SEO.