SEO Meta Description Testing to Boost Your Organic Click Through Rate.

Whether or not you have designed your web page to display the content you are targeting, you will always have your page title and meta description visible in your search engine listing. If you learn to optimize your meta description, however, you can significantly increase the number of people who consider your site important and relevant enough to visit it when finding it on a search engine listing.

This article will describe how to use meta description testing to boost your search engine click through rate.

Why focus on the meta description?

When searching on the Internet, what people see when search engine result pages provide listings impacts what they decide to click on. This is the "meta description."
The more the written text, or copy, interests people who might click onto the link, the more likely they are to click through and find out what the site is all about. Ultimately, this eventually leads to higher search engine rankings, as well as increased levels of profit.

How is this done?

To engage in meta description testing, you should first think about a few different factors. First of all, you'll want to know what the market potential is for the various keywords your web site is trying to attract. You can use Google Insights and the Google External Keywording tool to figure out how many searches are being done in your local market, and which keyword searches tend to be used most often by searchers on the Internet.

Second, you'll want to make sure your web site is already performing well. If your site has a high bounce rate, which is typically any number above 30 percent, this suggests that you might have a tough time getting conversions even if your click throughs increase, so you might want to focus on increasing this number first.

However, it is possible that your site might be attracting search traffic that isn't relevant simply because you haven't taken the time to properly optimize your site. If that is the case, then you might get a boost in your ratings after modifying your meta description.

Identifying keywords for testing

Use the Google External Keywording Tool to figure out good keyword combinations and insert them into your site. Vary your meta description on a systematic basis, such as by trying out a different description every week. You will want to leave some time for your data trends to stabilize so you can be sure that you are obtaining accurate results that are not vulnerable to daily fluctuations.

Over time, you should be able to gain an accurate picture of the relative effectiveness of each batch of meta descriptions by following the next step.

How do you measure your click through rate?

Finally, you measure your click through rate by looking through Google Analytics to find the report buried under Traffic Sources > Search Engine Optimization > Queries. The greater the click through rate, naturally, the more successful your meta description probably is, which helps you in optimizing it further for future visitors.

Tara

About the Guest Author:

Tara is an online copy-writer at Brisbane based SEM and SEO agency Search Factory. Through her experience writing for the web, Tara understands how tweaking elements of your site like meta-descriptions can help drive traffic and business results. Find out more at searchfactory.com.au