To put it very simply, the meta description comprises the couple of sentences that you see under each of the results in the SERPs.
The meta description has different uses. For one, it is used to give an outline or synopsis of a webpage or a blog post to the user. The meta description is also a very important element of SEO since it allows the search engine to determine and understand what the particular webpage is about.
By looking at the metadata (such as the keywords and the meta description), the search engine understands the relevancy of the content. After determining the relevancy, the search engine determines the queries that it has to respond to by showing the particular website in the SERPs.
From the brief aforementioned points, it’s understandable that the meta description is a very important and vital part of SEO. You have to be careful when writing it so that it can please both, the search engine and the users.
In this post, we are going to be looking at how you can summarize an article (or a blog post) in order to create a meta description.
Some Rules About Writing a Meta Description
Before we get into how you can summarize an article in order to create a meta description, there are a couple of different things that we should clear up.
First of all, it has to be remembered that the meta description is really brief. The usual number of characters that are written in meta descriptions is around 150 – 160. This is around 22 to 40 words in total.
For example, here is what a normal meta description looks like:
Now, considering that meta descriptions are written this small, we can appreciate how drastically we have to summarize the article.
Secondly, the other thing that we have to remember about meta descriptions is that they have to be written around the main keyword. That means that there is yet another constraint that you have to consider when creating one.
The reason why we mentioned both these points beforehand is to signify the fact that summarizing an article by writing a meta description is not like creating any other summaries.
In normal summaries, we would usually cut the content down to 10% of its original length. However, when we are writing a meta description, that comes down to around 1% percent or even less.
With all that in mind, let’s move on to look at how you can summarize an article for creating a meta description.
How to Summarize an Article for the Meta Description?
Here are the steps that you can follow in order to summarize an article for writing the meta description:
- Read the Content to Understand the Main Theme
The first thing that you have to do before creating the summary is to go through the content in order to understand what it is mainly about. Remember, while we have to do things like keeping the description short and optimized, we also have to focus on the fact that online users are going to read it. That is why we have to sum up the main theme of the article as concisely as we can when writing it.
- Take Out One or Two of the Most Meaningful Sentences from the Article
After you’ve read the article, go ahead and take out one or two of the most succulent sentences from the article. The sentences should be such that they should convey the main idea of the whole content easily.
On the other hand, if there are no such sentences that you can find in the content, then you can create a couple on your own.
For example, if we’re to take the article that we’re writing right now, these two sentences would convey the overall theme and meaning of the article easily:
The meta description is a very important and vital part of SEO. In this post, we’re going to be looking at how you can summarize an article in order to create a meta description.
The above description is about 145 characters (without spaces).
If you cannot think of any way to create such meaningful sentences, you can always take the help of an online text summarizer. These tools run on an automated algorithm that allows them to scan the text and extract the key sentences from it.
- Insert Your Keyword in the Description
The next thing that you have to do after creating the description is to check whether or not it is optimized for SEO. As far as the description goes, you basically have to check the presence of the keyword and the character length.
- Your description should have the main focus keyword present at least once in it.
- The total number of characters in the description should be less than 160. You can write more than this but then the description will end with the ellipsis (…). That makes the description look patchy.
- Finalize the Description
Once all the above is done, you just have to finalize the description by checking and removing grammatical, spelling, and punctuation errors from it.
You should also run a quick plagiarism check on the description to make sure that you are not copying anyone accidentally. If there is any such plagiarism in the description, edit it so that the thing becomes unique.
Conclusion
And that’s pretty much it. That is how you can summarize an article in order to create a meta description.
The process itself is easy enough. However, there are a number of different factors that you have to be mindful of when creating the summary. You have to make sure that you remain within the character limit and also that you use the main focus keyword in the description.
You can also take help from a text summarizer during this process. A text summarizer can help you understand the main key points from the content so that you can create a meta description focused on them.
