SEO Description: In 160 characters, should you write an “abstract” or a “subtitle”?

(Reading time: 5 – 8 minutes)

You have a title and 160 character SEO description luring readers from search engine result pages to your website. Are you getting this right? Would you even know if you’re getting it right? Step this way and let’s take a look!

Everyone serious about publishing on the Web faces the prospect of creating little blurbs of text to describe what they wrote about, or what a reader should care, or whatever else necessary to drive traffic.

First, let’s get some definitions out of the way. For this discussion:

Abstract:

Encapsulates result for the whole article in 160 characters. You give the reader everything he or she needs, upfront, to evaluate whether or not the material in the article is relevant. That is, the reader can take action without reading the article!

Subtitle:

Provides benefit-driven sales pitch in 160 characters to inspire or goad the reader into clicking through. Works best when the article delivers on the promise of the subtitle. Otherwise, you’re going into spam country, fast. But the reader MUST read the article to evaluate the benefits.

These words “abstract” and “subtitle” are subject to change without notice. If I find better terms in wider use, I’ll use those terms instead. The principles remain the same.

Abstract as proxy for the paper

In a different life, I was classically trained as an academician. This means I have a PhD in engineering from a top school and I’ve published a bunch of academic papers.

Publishing academic papers is part and parcel of academic life. Academic papers have a formal structure resulting from hundreds of years of convention: Abstract, Introduction, Theory, Methodology, Results, Conclusion or Summary. In this system of writing, the abstract stands proxy for the entire paper. The abstract gives the reader everything of consequence in the paper… the paper essentially exists to support the abstract. As a result, when performing literature reviews, there is often no need to actually read a large number of papers. All you need is the abstract to determine the work’s relevance, and get the result.

Subtitle for enticing readers

In contrast, great advertising and sales literature never gives it away up front. The headline or title may is followed with a subtitle promising even more than the title (but not giving anything away), then followed by a paragraph of “teaser” text to lock in your interest. If you want to know all about a product, you are invited to read further, and further, and further, until you are presented with a compelling offer inducing you to Take Action Now!

“Show me the difference!”

Yes! I hear you! You want examples, and you want them now!

Here’s what these two forms of writing look like. We’ll use this very article as a self-referential example. Here’s the abstract:

Benefit-driven SEO description “subtitles” drive traffic to your website, while “abstract” style SEO descriptions allow readers to take action without reading.

A sharp reader has no need to read through. The claim of “benefit-driven subtitles driving traffic” makes perfect sense, and the reader will go searching for how to write benefit-driven subtitles. Now check out the difference between that abstract… and this subtitle:

You have a title and 160 character SEO description to lure readers from search engine result pages to your website. Are you getting it right? Do you know?

There’s a very strong implied benefit to the reader: they will learn whether they are “getting it right,” or messing it up.

Tell ‘em what you’re going to tell ‘em

Hold these two small paragraphs in your mind for a moment, and recall a basic tenet of journalism: “Tell ‘em what you’re gonna tell ‘em, tell ‘em, tell ‘em what you told ‘em.”

The abstract short-circuits this process and provides the “tell ‘em” part. Bad copy! If you want readers to click through and continue reading, “Tell ‘em what you’re going to tell ‘em” instead.

Learn more!

How did I learn all this stuff?

Very good question.

I learned it by:

• Reading: lots and lots of books on marketing, advertising and selling (and psychology, but let’s keep that between the two of us)
• Writing: lots and lots of articles on many different topics. It’s always confounding to see what readers actually read… it’s never your best stuff… often it’s your knock offs!
• Watching: my search results and other search results. See for yourself: check out the search text for top results on highly competitive search terms. For example, I’m adding to the article [7/8/2009] because I just got a search result on this page with the terms “sell yourself in 160 characters.” Since selling yourself in 160 characters could be a subtitle for this article, it makes sense to roll these terms in, naturally.

You can do all this too. In fact, I thoroughly recommend you get started right away. Purchase, immediately, Eugene M. Schwartz’s classic book “Breakthrough Advertising.” This one is expensive. It was out of print for decades, and someone picked up the rights to it and put it back in print. It’s worth it! And not just for advertising… these principles work for all writing with intent to persuade.

Then go rewrite the SEO descriptions for 1. your highest traffic article, and 2. your lowest traffic article. Check back in a couple of weeks, tell me how it goes.

There’s more…

These notions of “abstract” and “subtitle” apply to teasers and excerpts as well. A teaser can be as long as couple hundred words. Use those words to build interest rather than giving away the farm for free. I’ll have a article going into more depth on teasers and excerpts in the future. In the meantime, check out “Writing Effective Teasers: Inspiring people to [Read more...]”

Tagged as: Abstract, Excerpt, SEO