Introduction
Meta-descriptions play a big role in search results. In case you’re unfamiliar with the term, a meta description is the snippet of the information below the link of a search result. Its purpose is to describe the contents of the page to the searcher. The end goal is to convince and persuade the searcher to click through to your website. Any words that match the search term are bolded in the description.
In the below image, you can see the meta description that’s showing in the search engine when you search for a specific website.
Steps
- Store’s Default Title and Description
Your store’s meta description (default description) describes your store as a whole in the search engine results, as the default title is your store’s pages title for non-content pages that do not have a custom title. In order to change both Default Title and Description, follow the below steps:
- Go to your admin panel > Advanced > Settings
- Click on Design under General section
- Click on HTML Head tab and fill the Default Title, Default Description and Default Keywords of your online store
- Click on Save Config
Let’s assume that you are selling watches, you must add meta description that will help the searcher to find the watches in your store in the search result. In order to do that follow the below steps:
- From your store’s dashboard, go to Catalog > Products > Manage Products
- Click on the product that you want to update its meta descriptions
- Then click on Meta Information tab to expand it, and fill in the following:
- Meta Title: Add the same name of the product in the text field
- Meta Keywords: Are a group of keywords used for optimizing SEO which describing the type of products your store is selling. Separate between the keywords by a comma. For example, if you are selling Casio watch, you can add: Casio, watch, youth, for men, and so on…
- Meta Description: The meta description appears on a Google search results page under the Page Title. This description helps people decide to click on your result, as opposed to a result above or below you. Think of it as a call-to-action. The meta description shouldn’t be more than 255 characters.
- Once you finish click on “Save” button
- CMS Pages
- From your store’s dashboard, go to Content > CMS > Pages
- Click on the page you want to update its meta information
- Then click on “Meta Data” tab and fill in the following:
- Keywords: Are a group of keywords that are using to optimize the SEO of the page. For example: In about us page: About us, about my store, and so on…
- Description: Meta title is what is shown below search engine results
- Once you finish click on “Save Page” button
- Categories
- From your store’s dashboard, go to Catalog > Categories > Manage Categories
- Click on the category that you want to update its meta information
- In “General Information” tab, scroll down to:
- Meta Keywords: Add a group of keywords separated by a comma that expresse the category
- Meta Description: Add description of the category that should be showing below search engine results
- Once you finish click on “Save Category” button
Please pay attention: Do not duplicate any content for the meta description of products, categories or CMS pages. This will effect on the search engine optimization of the store.
Outcome
After reading this article, you should be able to how to update the meta description for your store’s default description, products, categories and CMS pages.