Elis G. Hayakawa

After you’ve written a blog, it goes without saying that you want people to view it. Creating a professional, accurate, and valuable post is fundamental to having a successful blog. However, there’s more to getting views than writing a great post.

An effective strategy for gaining traffic and improving your click-through rate is to write custom meta descriptions. Think of it as a sales pitch for your post. Why wouldn’t you want to make it as good as possible? As a part of my mission of Mastering SEO in 30 Days, I decided to write 5 custom meta descriptions for Chirp using these 5 techniques.

1. Provide a solution to the user
2. Keep it concise
3. Correctly utilize keywords
4. Implement a call-to-action
5. Use positive emotion

What is Chirp?

Chirp is a company that sells a product called the Chirp Wheel. The goal of their products is back pain relief and recovery. They have good social media marketing and overall, their website copy is great. However, they have yet to take advantage of custom meta descriptions.

I decided to write descriptions for these 5 blogs.

1. 17 Quick Exercises for Hip Pain Relief
2. 5 Tips to Sleep Better With Back Pain
3. 7 Physical Therapy Exercises for Lower Back Pain
4. Running with Back Pain: What You Need to Know
5. 5 Quick Core Exercises for Hip Pain Relief

Providing a Solution: 17 Quick Exercises for Hip Pain Relief

When people search for something, they are often experiencing some type of problem. In this scenario, they would be experiencing hip pain. I edited the description to show the user that the solution to their hip pain can be found in the post.

Before:

After:

Keyword focus: “hip pain exercises”

Keeping it Concise: 5 Tips to Sleep Better with Back Pain

A meta description serves as a snippet or preview of your post. Google cuts off the description at 155-160 characters. This results in a rather unflattering look. To avoid this, I wrote a short description within the character limit.

Before:

After:

(Total characters = 93)

Keyword focus: “back pain” “sleep”

Correctly Utilizing Keywords: 7 Physical Therapy Exercises for Lower Back Pain

Your meta description should have the target keyword included to appeal to the Google search algorithm. However, this doesn’t mean you should stuff it with keywords. Keywords should be included when relevant. In this post, I optimized for “physical therapy” and “lower back pain”.

Before:

After:

Keyword focus: “physical therapy” “lower back pain”

Implement a Call-To-Action: Running with Back Pain: What you need to know

Using a CTA is a great way to compel users to click on your post. They create a sense of urgency which, in most cases, leads to more website traffic. I utilized a simple yet effective CTA to encourage users to check out the post.

Before:

After:

Keyword focus: “back pain” “running”

Use Positive Emotion: 5 Quick Core Exercises for Pain Relief

Using positive emotional words in your title and meta description is shown to increase traffic. It’s important to use positive words that are consistent with your brand. I wrote a description and used emotional words such as “strong”, “amazing”, “fresh, and “quick”.

Before:

After:

Keyword focus: “back health” “core exercises”

Conclusion

Will meta descriptions make or break your business? Absolutely not. However, given that customizing meta descriptions is completely free and results in more website traffic, there’s no reason why we shouldn’t take advantage of them.

With these new meta descriptions, Chirp would be able to improve its click-through rate and ultimately increase conversions.