How to Use Meta Description in Squarespace to Boost Traffic
Want extra traffic from Google? Meta description might be your answer.
If you’re familiar with meta tags in SEO, you may be surprised to find there is no meta description plugin in Squarespace. In Squarespace, meta description is called SEO description.
In this article, you’ll find everything you need to know about Squarespace SEO description.
What Is Meta Description
SEO description, or meta description, is the texts that sometimes show up under the title on search engine snippet and on social media sharing posts:
Meta description allows you to propose to search engines and social networks what they should display as a preview of your page.
Without this meta tag, search engines and other web platforms will automatically pick the first few sentences or random texts from your page.
Meta description doesn’t affect your site ranking directly, but it can boost the click-through rate.
A long time ago, search engines used to look for keywords in these lines of text. Since this led to spammy keyword stuffing, Google decided to stop using keywords meta tag in ranking.
However, the meta description tag might be used by search engines when it’s a good summary of your page and matches the user’s search term.
That means with compelling copy, you can boost the likelihood someone will click on your website, which accomplishes two goals:
More people click on your website even if your ranking stays the same.
As click-through rate is a ranking factor, accomplishing #1 can indirectly improve your site ranking.
How to Change Meta Description in Squarespace
Page-level Meta Description
Follow these three steps to add meta description to most Squarespace pages (except the homepage):
From home menu, click on Pages
Hover over a page and click on the gear icon
Go to SEO tab. Write meta description under SEO Description field
If you’re on Squarespace 7.0, note that the page description field under General or Basic tab is NOT SEO description. Though depending on your template, page description might appear in search results if there’s no SEO description.
Regarding what to write, think of your page meta description as an ad copy. What would you say to make someone want to read more?
My no-brainer formula for meta descriptions is: Question to pique interest + Benefit + Call-to-action. And add keywords somewhere in that description, preferably in the first sentence.
Here’s an example of SEO description from my ultimate guide about Squarespace SEO page: “Want to improve Squarespace SEO? Get 20 practical tips on how to optimize Squarespace images, site speed, security, and even lesser-known tricks. Click here.“
Site-level Meta Description
Squarespace meta description for the homepage isn’t at the same location as all other pages. It’s a feature called “site meta description” under marketing settings.
Follow these steps to add site meta description for your home page on Squarespace:
From home menu, click on Marketing > SEO
Scroll down to the bottom. Write meta description under SEO Site Description field
Though the field is called SEO Site Description, this is just the meta description of your homepage. It is not duplicated in any other pages even if you leave all page-level meta descriptions empty (more on what will happen if you leave a meta description field empty later).
Since the homepage often gets more exposure on search engines, you should spend extra time to make sure you have a good ad copy here.
Here’s an example of SEO Site Description if you were Madam Rosmerta, owner of The Three Broomsticks (Harry Potter fan, anyone?):
SEO Site Description example: “Top inn in Hogsmeade village. Enjoy the locals’ favorite signature butterbeer and an affordable stay in our warm and welcoming place. Booking today!”
Blog/Product Meta Description
Here’s the steps to add meta description to collection items (products, blog posts…):
From home menu, click on Pages > Blog Page or Product Page
For blog posts, hover over a post and click Edit. For product, double click a product
Go to SEO tab and write meta description under SEO Description field
What If You Don’t Use SEO Description
If you leave the SEO Description field empty, Squarespace will automatically use the first 2-3 sentences on your page as meta description. You can check this by looking at the source code of any webpage built on Squarespace that doesn’t have a customized SEO Description.
This isn’t bad for your SEO but it’s… useless.
Because search engines like Google can pull relevant information from your page to display in the search result snippet anyway.
If you don’t use SEO Description in Squarespace, it doesn’t affect your site ranking but you might miss an opportunity to have a better ad copy for your page.
Do You Need SEO Description For Every Page?
Though every SEO blog out there says you should optimize meta description for every web page, I don’t think it’s the best use of your time nor that it will move the needle for your site ranking.
The reason is because 1) meta description is a tiny factor for SEO and 2) you can’t be sure search engines will display your meta descriptions regardless of how well-written it is. If you have time, by all means, do it because of all the benefits we mentioned at the beginning.
If you don’t have time, simply prioritizing meta descriptions for the most important pages like the homepage and product pages.
Meta descriptions can only help you if your pages already have high exposure.
Look at Search Keywords Analytics and identify pages that are already ranking page 1 and 2 but can use a little boost in position. These are the pages you want to have customized meta descriptions. On the other hand, if your website is on page 10, focus on improving page content first!
Another alternative for meta description is optimizing your page content for search snippets. Essentially, structure your page logically to make it easy for search engines to pull meaningful information from your page content.
Google said it “sometimes uses <meta> tag content to generate snippets, if we think they give users a more accurate description than can be taken directly from the page content.”
That means Google will always prioritize pulling direct content from your page first before considering your meta description. This can lead to a messy snippet even though you have set a meta description.
To prevent this, pay attention to a few places in your content:
First 100 words (first few paragraphs) that mention the keyword
First two main headings (H2)
Paragraphs immediately follow these headings
Subheading (H3) and/or bullet-point list under the main heading
When search engines scan your page, these are the places they’ll likely pull the information to display on a search result snippet if they find a keyword match. Make sure you write compelling content for these parts.
Best Practices for Meta Description Tags
Now that you know your options for meta description and how to implement them in Squarespace, here are some best practices to keep in mind when writing meta descriptions.
✧ Use Focus Keyword
Search engines will bold the search term if it is on your meta description. That helps your snippets stand out more from other search results and increase the chance people click on it.
✧ Don’t Keyword Stuffing
Write in a natural language. Stuffing keywords won’t help improving ranking here. In fact, if Google sees your meta description as spammy, it will ignore your description completely.
✧ Length
There’s no restriction on how many words your meta description needs to be.
Right now, Google’s meta description is cut off at 155 characters. You can write meta descriptions at this exact length to make sure your snippets display perfectly.
You can also write a longer description since a bit cut-off won’t deter people from clicking. In fact, SEMRush conducted an experiment that showed their meta descriptions actually perform better when exceeding the character count.
In short, write in any length, as long as you can entice people to click.
Useful resources: If you want to get more tips, here are two addtional articles: Tips & examples and Good vs bad meta descriptions.
Conclusion
Hope you found this post useful in optimizing your Squarespace site.
I’d love to hear from you:
Are you planning to start using meta descriptions in Squarespace?
Let me know in the comments!
