Overview

Meta descriptions matter for SEO. Not for rankings. For SEO.

Summary

Most of my automotive dealer clients don't know about meta descriptions at all. The ones that do, either think they matter for organic rankings or don't matter at all. In fact, they don't make any difference on organic results. So please stop stuffing a keyword list and eight cities into your meta descriptions. It is better to think of the meta description as a paid search ad. This is where you get to advertise. The difference in CTR for a well-written meta description and a poorly written one is huge. Just take a look at your web analytics for keywords you know rank well (not your dealership name). Now change your meta description to something that screams value and call to action. Mark the date you changed it in your web analytics software. Wait 3 weeks. Collect data. Report to your peers that you're a genius. I have performed this experiment when beginning SEO services for dealers when they had very poor meta descriptions in place.

Results

The results of comparing traffic for high ranking keywords before my changes and after is a difference of about 30% when the description is quite poor.