There are many things that go into on-page SEO on your alternative health website. One of those strategies is to write a customized meta-description that includes the targeted keyword for your page. The experts here at Functional Medicine SEO always write a custom meta description for every page we publish or optimize.
What is a Meta Description?
When you do a search, Google pulls up all relevant results in the order that it thinks you’ll find the answer you’re looking for. One of the ways to help you decide if the site is relevant to you is by the meta description. This is a short paragraph explaining the information you’ll find on the page.
As you can see, when you search for functional medicine SEO, our meta description comes up with a concise sentence that tells a doctor exactly what we can do for their company.
Add Your Keywords to The Meta
There are several places your main keywords should appear on the page you are optimizing. The meta is one of the most important places to make sure your keyword appears. You don’t want to stuff it with keywords, but you do want to naturally include it in the short description you write.
Earn The Click
Simply getting on the first page of the results isn’t enough. You are still competing with all of the other results. The goal of writing a customized meta description is that you want to earn the click from the reader.
Depending on the type of page or post you are creating will determine what information you want to include in your meta. Here are a few tips to write customized descriptions for the different types of content:
1. Blogs
When you write a blog, you will want to give the reader real information so they know you have something valuable to say. For example, if you are writing a post on which vitamins to take to help boost immunities, list a few of them in the description. Or, if you are sharing holistic ways to decrease high-blood pressure, add one of the steps in your meta.
2. Service Pages
Service pages are the pages that are usually shown on your menu. These pages are specifically written for the different functional medicine services you offer. This is a good formula to use for these pages:
Name of company offers keyword to the name of city you service. Contact us today.
3. Home Page
For the meta description on the home page of your site, you want to write a clear cut sentence or two that states what your practice can do for a patient. If you offer only local medical services, you can include the city your office is located in. It’s always a good idea to add the name of the city you serve in your content, because it helps drive local traffic.
How Long Should a Meta Description Be?
These descriptions should be no greater than 155 characters including spaces and letters. If you write something longer than that, it will get cut off in the search results. We always install the Yoast SEO plugin on websites we work on. That plugin gives us the green light on when the meta is long enough.
You also need to make sure that it is long enough. Short metas are not as effective in site conversions as longer ones. Do your best to get between 135-155 characters.
Contact us Today For SEO Services
The team at Functional Medicine SEO works with alternative health practitioners across the US. We take care of your online presence so your potential patients can find you. Our goal is to learn your practice and what’s most important to you so we can target the right patients.
Contact us today if you have any questions. Also, we would like to offer a free strategy session to you. Just sign up here and one of our experts will go over your website with a video that you can keep and review. We look forward to working with you!
