: Page title and meta description for a page containing only a list of items I own a website which contains pages with lists of items. For example: a page contains a list of books about affiliate

@Si4351233

Im pretty sure Google is going to start cracking down on the "X ways", "using this weird trick", "make money from" style pages. They are mostly clickbait/spam garbage, ironically [often] stemming from affiliate marketing style tactics. So to start, I would remove the "12 ways" part from the beginning, move it nearer to the end, and make it sound less spammy. Something like "Affiliate Marketing - Tips for Clicks in the New World of Spam"

Next you cant answer a question with a question. If someone searches for "How to learn affiliate marketing" your site is not gonna show. Why? Because the first line of your desc is a clone. Google wants to provide answers, not verbatim of the question. Also you used affiliate marketing 3 times in less than 2 lines, followed by the classic clickbait "how to make money online" garbage. Total spam that is most likely gonna be knocked waaaaaay down the results unless you change that/those title too. Re-write these using sane, natural verbage, that applies to the questions at hand.

In general, act less selly and baity and answer questions with something targeted legit. Just be real, dont try to "trick" or stuff/roll for SERP clicks. You should probably also re-write your articles to reflect this advice, otherwise readers are gonna be in the same boat as you are.

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@Chiappetta492

Appearing more often in search results


Does anyone have a suggestion how to rewrite the description (or the title) in order to make the pages appear more on the search results ...


The meta description of a site does not affect how often or how high up it appears in search results. In fact, in search results, Google sometimes even ditches the meta description completely and shows a text snippet from the page instead, if this seems more suitable to them.

If you want your site to appear more often, try to get as many links as possible to your site. Good content should naturally generate more backlinks. Also make sure that the keywords which users search appear on the site in a reasonable density (it should appear often, but not too often because that will look like keyword spamming).

Better meta description


... and look more natural and hand made, so people would click on it more?


When searching, users read the description to figure out if a certain page is what they are looking for. So instead of repeating the same keyword over and over, try adding more additional information that helps the user decide if this is they want to visit.

The best solution would be adding „natural“ descriptions for your pages by hand-summarizing the content. If your site consists of user generated content, you should consider adding a text field where users can add a description of the content themselves.

If this is not an option, you should still try putting as much (meta-) information as is available about the page into the description. I am thinking of something like this:


12 ways to learn affiliate marketing - Happiness Hunt
A list of 12 items about affiliate marketing, including „Item A“. Written by Ronen.


In this example, I included the amount of items, the topic, the first item of the list and the author. If you have any other additional information, like a category or tags, include that, too.

In all cases, make sure that relevant keywords are in the meta description, as they will get highlighted to users that search for them.

What you should not do is repeat what is already said in the title in the description. Right now, you are repeating the word affiliate marketing over and over in the description, even though it is already clear from the title that this is what this site is about. This does not add any useful information.

Also make sure that you have an individual description for each page, and not some generic text that shows up for all pages. As said, the description should help the user decide if this is the right result for them. A generic description can not do that.

Lastly, consider adding a call-to-action, like ”Click to learn more about affiliate marketing.“ Personally, I dislike this, as it does not add any additional information about the content, but for certain content a call-to-action can certainly increase clicks.

Further reading


”Improve snippets with a meta description makeover“ on the Google Webmaster Central Blog
”Meta description“ on MOZ
”Call to action“ on Wikipedia

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