The importance of blog descriptions may not seem important to you now.

When users come across your brand in the SERPs, the first thing they come across is the description. Next to the title, it is the one that makes make or break decision.

Blog or post description is the piece of text that appears below your link in SERPs and social sites.

There are two types of descriptions for a blog.

  1. Blog description: A description of your whole blog visible under your blog’s homepage link.
  2. Blog post description: A description of what your blog post is about that is different for your each and every blog post

Refer the below table of content on how I’ve categorized this blog post to cover both of the types of blog descriptions.

How to write blog descriptions?

Other than having meta description for each of your blog posts on your blog, you need to also have a description for blog/homepage of your website.

If you are on WordPress, there are many SEO plugins like Yoast SEO that lets you add homepage blog description. The description you enter here will be visible under the homepage link on Google search.

Wordpress SEO meta description

In your blog description, you need to include any/all of the following:

  1. USP of your product/service/brand
  2. Social proof or endorsements about your brand
  3. Elements are build rapport
  4. Your expertize that showcases you as an authority
  5. Your mission or vision statement

Blog description examples

In this section, I’ve tried my best to include blog description examples from top blogs of various niches like tech, health, fitness, travel, lifestyle, etc.

Hope you’ll find it useful 🙂

Example #1: Digital Photography School

DPS Blog Description

Why it works? It describes for whom the blog content is for and also presents the social proof that the blog is read my 5 million people per month.

Example #2: Nerd Fitness

Nerd Fitness Blog Description

Why it works? Fitness seems to be complicated for average people. Nerd Fitness describes its content to be beginner-friendly – by mentioning – fitness for “average Joes”.

Example #3: Dr. Axe

Dr Axe Blog Description

Why it works? For a personal brand like Dr. Axe’s, showcasing the authority is very important. So, describing the qualifications, expertise, and mission is very important.

Example #4: Engadget

Engadget Blog Description

Why it works? They’ve showed how old their brand is by including the date of their inception. In case of online brands, old equates to trustworthiness.

Example #5: Nomadic Matt

Nomadic Matt Description

Why it works? It showcases the blog’s USP that says – “world’s #1 budget travel writer”.

Example #6: Vulcan Post

Vulcan Post Blog Description Example

Why it works? It describes the content on their blog and also presents their USP/mission – “We aim to add a human element to technology”.

Example #7: Lonely Planet

Lonely Planet Example

Why it works? They started their blog description with a question that demands attention, and then described what their website is all about.

How to write blog post descriptions?

In WordPress, if you’ve installed the Yoast SEO plugin I explained earlier, in the post editor screen, you need to see something like below.

Post meta description

This is called the meta description that Google displays below your blog post title in search engine results page.

It should clearly describe what you have in your post for your readers. By this, visitors will be clear that your blog post is what they are looking for.

Include a summary of your post in your descriptions. It’s like giving a sneak peek of your blog post.

With this, you will have more targeted visitors. You will get rid of irrelevant traffic on your site. In turn, this decreases bounce rate, which is again, a content quality signal to Google.

There are 10 results to click on for people on Google SERP.

Why do people need to click on your blog? You need to treat your blog description as a teaser for your blog post.

You can begin your descriptions with sentences like:

  • After our research, we found that…
  • Here are some ground-breaking techniques…
  • These jaw-dropping hacks help you…

You can end your descriptions with call to action texts like:

  • Want to know more?
  • Here’s how to get it!
  • Here’s the forgotten secret!
  • Let’s see the shocking truth!

You need to provoke curiosity in the minds of the audience who searches for your target keywords in Google.

It helps you to garner more clicks to your blog posts.

How to optimize blog post description for a keyword?

You need to include your target keyword in your meta description.

When there is a presence of your target keyword earlier in your article, it sends a strong relevancy signal to Google that your article is indeed about the given keyword.

Including your target keyword preferably in the first sentence of your meta description is preferred.

In the rest of your description, you need to try including other long tail keywords and also LSI keywords. It signals the content relevancy both to Google and also the searchers.

Tips for great blog post description

Here are some of the tips.

  • The blog description limit is 320 characters. It can be shorter though.
  • Use conversational words; like you and I. People like to be addressed. It shows you the value that you give to your readers.
  • Use impact or power words. The power words demand the attention of the audience and lead them to click on your blog.
  • Cut out filler words. Be crazy about word choice. Cut out filler words and be to-the-point.
  • Include your main keyword in the blog description. Also, include LSI or semantic keywords. It helps Google to confirm that your content is really about the topic.

Don’t use the keyword repeatedly in your meta descriptions. It leads to the keyword stuffing penalty.

Final words

For crafting great blog descriptions, you have to learn the art of expressing more complex things in as few words as possible.

You need to make people feel that your blog post has the answer for their search query.

Although it doesn’t directly help you when it comes to ranking your website, it helps you to get more clicks from people and get targeted traffic.