What is better for Meta description ??
-
Hi everybody,
I noticed that a lot of websites prefer their meta description would be the first words of the content inside.
I on the other hand thought that google will prefer the meta description to be like a peek to what going to be inside.
anyone can explain me, what is better?Thanks
-
Dynamic templates can be a great solution, so long as you're incorporating a variety of dynamic elements, not just swapping out one or two words.
I have seen some debate on whether or not to set a meta description, and I think it's really a CRO choice. Google is always going to match a search query with a relevant excerpt from the page when a meta description is not available, so if you trust Google's judgment, it can be fine to go without. I don't think that philosophy is hurting Yelp at all.
-
Thanks all for your insights on this - it's very helpful.
If you have a unique page I am sure, writing unique content is best. But in the example of Yelp, where they have 100,000+ of pages, the meta description in the code is the first lines from the first post on the page.
Would they be better off creating a general template for each page type ?
For example for restaurant pages (JUST AN EXAMPLE
"<# of posts> posts about <restaurant name="">, what did people like? what did people hate? - read on Yelp"</restaurant>
Thanks again for your help!
-
Writing your own unique, compelling meta description is best. Often, large sites resort to using first words of content as the meta description because they cannot scale writing and implementing 100,000+ meta descriptions.
-
Rebecca - CTR does not effect rankings, not what I said. However I believe that google does monitor the users on page experience and check whether they task complete. If they task complete and spend time on the site, we have seen rankings influenced by that. So a combination of CTR and time on site/task complete.
-
Google doesn't really have a preference since it's not a ranking factor. In fact, Google will often ignore your meta description entirely in favor of displaying a content snippet that it considers to be more relevant to the searcher's query.
However, you can increase your click-through rate by making it relevant to the query you're targeting. Make it descriptive and consider including a call to action to entice a searcher to click on your link. However, I disagree with another poster that click-through rate can affect rankings. It would be too easy to game the system, and search engines caught on to that trick a long, long time ago.
Basically, write unique, relevant meta descriptions for readers, not for search bots; and understand that Google will always treat your meta description as nothing more than a polite suggestion.
-
The meta description allows you an opportunity to construct your search result or Ad - for clickability.
Alick and Chris are spot on. You should consider creating a 156-160 characters meta description and ensure comprised with a call of action, so when customers read the meta description, they will be enticed to click on your link and visit your website. Meta descriptions are very important given their impact to directly drive traffic to your site.
Google has stated the meta description is not a direct ranking factor. Indirectly however it is. If more people click through to your website and those people ALSO engage with your website - our experience is your ranking can increase. If you increase your CTR on one page by changing the meta description it can translate into 1,000's of additional clicks per year.
Hope this assists.
-
Hi there,
You're right, a meta description should almost be like the blurb on a book giving the user a good idea of whats going on inside the page. The reason you might find that some meta descriptions are picking up the first words of content is because if a website does not have a meta description set, Google will pull what it thinks to be a good meta description from the content: normally he first sentence or two. They key is to get a good mix of good content, improve CTR & mix a keywordsor two in into a small area.
If you want some tips on writing a good meta descriptions there are some great resources here on Moz like the beginners guide to or Alick300s suggestions.You can also look through Q&A etc.
Hope that helps.
-
Hi,
Check this article @ https://mza.seotoolninja.com/learn/seo/meta-description
Hope this helps.
Thanks
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Incorrect Spelling Indexed In Meta Info - Can't Change It
Hi,It would be great if a member of the community could help me to resolve this issue.Google is indexing an incorrect spelling on of our key pages and we can't identify the reason why.- The page in question: https://newbridgesilverware.com/jewelleryAs you can see from the attached image, the Meta Title is rendered to contain the keyword "jewelry" (the American spelling.) We want this to read as "jewellery" - the British-English spelling. Yet in the page source the word is given in the meta title as "jewellery". Nowhere in the page source or on the page itself does the American spelling appear - yet Google still renders it in the Meta Title.Can anyone identify why this is happening and offer any possible solutions?Much appreciatedDhqJp
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Johnny_AppleSeed1 -
Translated version of meta description showing in SERPs
Hi all, When a search for our brand is done, the homepage is shown but the meta description is in French. We have a translated version of the site available once the user is on the site, but there's no reason it should be displaying the translated version in the SERPs. This issue has never happened before and began last week. Anyone seen anything similar? https://www.google.com/search?q=revolve+clothing Thanks.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ggpaul5620 -
Utf-8 symbols in the Title or Meta Description?
Has somebody any experience (pros or cons) to using utf-8 symbols in the Title or in the Meta Description tags?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Yosef
Expedia uses it:
http://prntscr.com/74ofrv 74ofrv0 -
When does it make sense to make a meta description longer than what's considered best practice?
I've seen all the length recommendations and understand the reasoning is that they will be cut off when you search the time but I've also noticed that Google will "move" the meta description if the search term that the user is using is in the cached version of the page. S I have a case where Google is indexing the pages but not caching the content (at least not yet). So we see the meta description just fine on the Google results but we can't see the content cache when checking the Google cached version. **My question is: **In this case, why would it be a bad idea to make a slightly lengthier (but still relevant) meta description with the intent that one of the terms in that description could match the user's search terms and the description would "move" to highlight that term in the results.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | navidash0 -
Google is not honoring my descriptions
I finally got our title tags honored and now Google is just making the descriptions whatever it wants. This is happening on pretty much every one of our pages. An example: http://www.sqlsentry.com/products/plan-explorer/sql-server-query-view SERPS = SQL Server MVP Aaron Bertrand shares a demo kit for Plan Explorer to give you better insight into the advantages of the tool, and to help you share its virtues ... Description tag = SQL Sentry Plan Explorer is a free query plan analysis tool that will allow you to find the most expensive operators by CPU, I/O, or both. I can see the description tag when I view source so I know that it is pulling it from the table correctly. What can I do to fix this?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Sika220 -
Some Tools Not Recognizing Meta Tags
I am analyzing a site which has several thousands of pages, checking the headers, meta tags, and other on page factors. I noticed that the spider tool on SEO Book (http://tools.seobook.com/general/spider-test) does not seem to recognize the meta tags for various pages. However, using other tools including Moz, it seems the meta tags are being recognized. I wouldn't be as concerned with why a tool is not picking up the tags. But, the site suffered a large traffic loss and we're still trying to figure out what remaining issues need to be addressed. Also, many of those pages once ranked in Google and now cannot be found unless you do a site:// search. Is it possible that there is something blocking where various tools or crawlers can easily read them, but other tools cannot. This would seem very strange to me, but the above is what I've witnessed recently. Your suggestions and feedback are appreciated, especially as this site continues to battle Panda.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ABK7170 -
Better to use specific cities or counties for SEO geographics?
Hello SEO experts! We are encountering a difficult situation at our marketing firm with a client who wants to optimize her site for keyworks + counties, as she doesn't want to be restricted to one specific city. We have suggested alternate solutions like location pages, utilization of H2's, etc, however, she wants to know the effectiveness of using a specific city (ie: Winona, MN) vs a county (ie: Winona County, MN) for SEO purposes. The research I have conducted thus far hasn't gotten me very far, basically I'm seeing that it all comes back to what people search for (cleaning services in Winona, MN vs. cleaning services in Winona County, MN). Does anyone have any insight into this issue?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | MLTGroup0 -
Better for SEO to No-Index Pages with High Bounce Rates
Greeting MOZ Community: I operate www.nyc-officespace-leader.com, a New York City commercial real estate web site established in 2006. An SEO effort has been ongoing since September 2013 and traffic has dropped about 30% in the last month. The site has about 650 pages. 350 are listing pages, 150 are building pages. The listing and building pages have an average bounce rate of about 75%. The other 150 pages have a bounce rate of about 35%. The building and listing pages are dragging down click through rates for the entire site. My SEO firm believe there might be a benefit to "no-index, follow" these high bounce rate URLs. From an SEO perspective, would it be worthwhile to "no-index-follow" most of the building and listing pages in order to reduce the bounce rate? Would Google view the site as a higher quality site if I had these pages de-indexed and the average bounce rate for the site dropped significantly. If I no-indexed these pages would Google provide bette ranking to the pages that already perform well? As a real estate broker, I will constantly be adding many property listings that do not have much content so it seems that a "no-index, follow" would be good for the listings unless Google penalizes sites that have too many "no-index, follow" pages. Any thoughts??? Thanks,
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Kingalan1
Alan0