For legal web content to really stand out on the search result page, you need a strong meta description. The meta description is a 160-character space where you can give a short preview of the article or blog that will be delivered upon clicking your link. As long as you promise to deliver what’s in your meta description, SEO marketing for your company can be greatly improved!
Think About How You View Search Results
The next time you perform a search on Google or Bing, think about what makes you click on a specific result. Did the link text entice you? Was it a sponsored link? More often than not, you’ll probably take a bit more time to read the little descriptions of each result before making your choice.
This one to two sentence space is your time to shine – with the right keywords you can capture the search engine’s attention AND readers’ attention at the same time. Naturally using appropriate keywords in your meta description is one of several actions that can help improve position on the search engine results pages (SERPs). Likewise, an informative meta description can catch your target audience’s attention as well.
What Makes a Meta Description Useful To SEO
If you’re optimizing your content for search result ranking, you want to improve your legal web content in every venue possible. Your page title, meta description, content headers, and article or blog body content are all locations to make sure your keywords are appearing naturally.
With the meta description, each page on your website should have a unique, descriptive 160 characters to appeal to search engines and readers. The search engines want to see unique metas for each page. Some content management systems allow a generic meta to be created so you won’t have blank space when you forget to insert a meta description into a content post. If you allow this to happen, Google says it may be “less likely to display the boilerplate text.”
When you’re writing these unique meta descriptions it’s best to keep it short, simple and relevant. You want to tease readers with what’s to come if they click your search result as the answer to their query. For example, if you’re writing a legal FAQ, your page title should be the question asked, and your meta should either build upon the question, or give a simple answer with a call to action (CTA) to click through for more.
Final Thought: Google Doesn’t Always Listen To Your Meta
In one of their resources for webmaster tools, Google outright admits that the description included on the search results isn’t always taken from your meta description. Sometimes, if Google thinks that your on-site content is more relevant it will use 160 characters of content from your legal web content, rather than your meta description.
Also, when performing SEO for law firms, your webmaster can work behind the scenes to structure your rich snippets (the term Google uses to describe the more robust article previews you may see in the search results). Rich snippets can be optimized to represent a business or organization, such as your law firm, or an individual author. The latter is especially useful if you have multiple attorneys contributing to your law firm website content.
The best way to make sure you’re getting the most out of your meta is to ensure it makes sense in regards to both your page title and your on-page content. As long as all three are in harmony in terms of topic and keywords, Google should identify your legal web content as a complete package of relevancy, perfect for SEO marketing your company.
For more tips and help with marketing through SEO and content optimization, We Do Web Content is here to help! Give us a call or fill out our contact form for an evaluation of your law firm’s website and legal web content. 888-521-3880.
Be sure to check out our glossary of content marketing terms to deepen your marketing strategy knowledge.
Alex Valencia is an influential entrepreneur, marketer, speaker, podcaster, and CEO of We Do Web Content, one of Inc. 5000’s fastest-growing businesses in America. His agency implements game-changing content marketing strategies and produces top-ranking web content for law firms, medical professionals, and small businesses nationwide.