META DESCRIPTION Character Limit is 155 (Explained)

Q: how long should meta descriptions be? is there a character limit?

Answer. As we learned in class today, the META DESCRIPTION tag is a suggestion to Google as to what your summary should be on a Google search results. The character limit is 155 characters.

Use one of the tools that we discussed such as Letter Count and pop your meta-description into the tool and count the characters.

SEO Objectives of the META DESCRIPTION tag

What are your objectives? First, be sure that the target keyword exists in the meta-description. If the target keyword is not in the meta-description Google will tend not to use your description! Second, the objective of the meta-description is to get the click from Google. Remember that the meta-description is the summary that the user sees on the Google search engine results page. So write a pithy, sexy meta-description that is exciting and will entice the user to click from Google to your webpage.

The meta-description is a very important tag for search engine optimization. Not because it has a huge impact on whether you show on a Google search engine results page, but rather because it has an impact on how exciting and sexy your descriptions are which has an impact on whether people click from Google to your website.

After all getting people to click from Google to your website is the whole purpose of search engine optimization. So, therefore, I am is huge believer in spending quality time writing pithy META DESCRIPTION tags. It will pay off in clicks FROM Google to your Website!