How important is writing meta description ?

[themonk3y]

I am using SEO by Yoast plugin on my WordPress blog. My question is that how important is to write a custom meta description for a particular post. If I write a custom meta description for a post am I depriving the post of other keywords in the post that people could have been searching for. For example if I write a meta description and I do not include the keywords "free blogging platform" in it and the keywords appears in the post a couple of times. Would this mean that I will not appear in the search results at all for "free blogging platform".

[WisTex]

Search engines that use the meta description mostly use it for displaying the description in the search results. While they might use the meta description to find additional keywords, they usually depend on the actual visible content, as well as what words people use when linking to the content, among other things.

Most search engines give low priority to meta descriptions as far as ranking goes because of past abuse of keyword stuffing.

So having a keyword in your meta description will not limit what keywords are applied to your content. In fact, most search engines weight keywords that appear in your content a lot more than those that show up in a meta description.

[Nathan]

On 3/18/2018 at 2:34 PM, WisTex said:

Search engines that use the meta description mostly use it for displaying the description in the search results. While they might use the meta description to find additional keywords, they usually depend on the actual visible content, as well as what words people use when linking to the content, among other things.

Most search engines give low priority to meta descriptions as far as ranking goes because of past abuse of keyword stuffing.

So having a keyword in your meta description will not limit what keywords are applied to your content. In fact, most search engines weight keywords that appear in your content a lot more than those that show up in a meta description.

Agreed, but I still take the time to write them.  I don't "game" them in anyway though.

[WisTex]

4 hours ago, Nathan said:

Agreed, but I still take the time to write them.  I don't "game" them in anyway though.

They can be really useful for increasing click-throughs in some cases, because your description may be better than what the search engine comes up with as a description.