Last month, Google changed its guidelines for how long your meta descriptions should be from approximately 160 characters to a maximum of 320 characters. This is a big change!

Having a longer meta description might help your site have more real-estate or visibility in search results, especially if your competitors have not updated their meta descriptions.

Try this:

Use Google Analytics to find your top 20 pages which get the most organic search traffic and update their meta descriptions for the new length, if you feel that more words will help explain the content.

Track how these pages perform with the new meta description and adjust as needed.

Ask me:

  • If you need help with Google Analytics or meta descriptions
  • If you would like us to install the Yoast SEO plugin for WordPress

More about meta descriptions:

  • Meta descriptions don’t help with rankings but do impact whether people are enticed to click through to your website.
  • Google may or may not show your entire meta description in search results, and it may not show it at all, preferring to show content from your page. Google decides what to show based on the search query and what’s on your page.

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