Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
Can I use the first sentence of my page content as a meta description tag as well?
-
I just want to copy my content on the page and use the first or as well the second sentence of the content self for my meta description tag. Is that OK? Or should the Meta description tag be different?
-
Ruslan, Thank you so much for your answer. Do you know by the chance the name of the plug in I can install for Wordpress (that's how my site is build in).
-
Hi Paulina.
I agree with Ruslan in terms of whether it is OK from a ranking perspective.
However, it is critical to remember that your meta data has another important objective - to entice searchers to click through to your page.
A well written meta description makes a considerable difference to click-through rates.
Consider spending as long on your page meta data as you would when trying to write an effective Adwords Ad.
In consideration of this objective (maximising click through rates), you may find that the first sentence or two of your body copy would not suffice as an effective meta description.
cheers, David.
-
I think nobody will blame me if I tell you YES, because until now it is not proven fact that the appearance of your keywords in meta description will make an impact on your rankings. However I will recommend two things:
-
If you use any type of CMS (Joomla or Werdpress) to build your website then you can download the plugin which generates the meta description automaticaly.
-
Still it's better if you will include the targeted keywords from page to meta description, and even if you check SeoMoz on-page optimization, those guys are recommend to do this.
-
Remember that attractive and interesting Meta Description might highlight you among your competitors and bring you additional traffic even if you are not TOP1.
Hope that it was clear.
-
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
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
-
Does hover over content index well
i notice increasing cases of portfolio style boxes on site designs (especially wordpress templates) where you have an image and text appears after hover over (sorry for my basic terminology). does this text which appears after hover over have much search engine value or as it doesnt immediately appear on pageload does it carry slightly less weight like tabbed content? any advice appreciated thanks neil
On-Page Optimization | | neilhenderson0 -
Business Name is Meta Description
I would like to know what your opinion would be regarding the business name displayed in the meta description. Would you write your business name as: Business Name or BusinessName™ (no space with Trademark) I used MOZ example from here (Meta Descriptions Best Practice) and inserted the different business names. Welcome to Business Name in San Diego, California - the nation's largest urban cultural park. Home of 15 major museums, renowned performing arts venues... Welcome to businessname™ in San Diego, California - the nation's largest urban cultural park. Home of 15 major museums, renowned performing arts venues... I'm not sure which would be best for Google and other search engines. Thanks for your help.
On-Page Optimization | | Kdruckenbrod0 -
Rel canonical tag back to the same page the tag is on?
Very simple, Why would a website (and I have seen tons doing this) link the rel canonical tag back to the same page the tag is on? Example: somepage.htm has a canonical tag linking to somepage.htm I thought the idea of this tag was to tell google if 2 pages are similar, this page is the original, and it's this page which should be indexed and the page with the tag on should pass all PR to the original. Maybe im wrong and someone can help me out to understand this.
On-Page Optimization | | activitysuper0 -
Can you change meta description at any time without loosing rankings?
I'm wondering if it is possible to change the meta description of a page on your site at any time without it affecting rankings on google? Is it only changing how my SERP looks? Or could bad things happen to changing your meta description? Appreciate all opinions on this one, thank you guys!
On-Page Optimization | | danielpett0 -
Page Title in Local SEO Title Tags?
Hi All, Still working on my title tag usage for local SEO, and I was hoping for some more feedback. My question is this: In Local SEO titles, I'm using location + keyword combinations, unique on each page. However, since each page has a specific title for the client, I figure I should be placing that at the front. My thought here was that this helps with the overall usability to the reader of the website. Ex. Contact Us page for Pizza shop Contact Us | Springfield IN Gourmet Pizza | Moe's Italian Pizza Anyone have thoughts on this one? Thank you!
On-Page Optimization | | kbaltzell0 -
Best practice for Meta-Robots tag in categories and author pages?
For some of our site we use Wordpress, which we really like working with. The question I have is for the categories and authors pages (and similiar pages), i.e. the one looking: http://www.domain.com/authors/. Should you or should you not use follow, noindex for meta-robots? We have a lot of categories/tags/authors which generates a lot of pages. I'm a bit worried that google won't like this and leaning towards adding the follow, noindex. But the more I read about it, the more I see people disagree. What does the community of Seomoz think?
On-Page Optimization | | Lobtec0 -
Avoiding "Duplicate Page Title" and "Duplicate Page Content" - Best Practices?
We have a website with a searchable database of recipes. You can search the database using an online form with dropdown options for: Course (starter, main, salad, etc)
On-Page Optimization | | smaavie
Cooking Method (fry, bake, boil, steam, etc)
Preparation Time (Under 30 min, 30min to 1 hour, Over 1 hour) Here are some examples of how URLs may look when searching for a recipe: find-a-recipe.php?course=starter
find-a-recipe.php?course=main&preperation-time=30min+to+1+hour
find-a-recipe.php?cooking-method=fry&preperation-time=over+1+hour There is also pagination of search results, so the URL could also have the variable "start", e.g. find-a-recipe.php?course=salad&start=30 There can be any combination of these variables, meaning there are hundreds of possible search results URL variations. This all works well on the site, however it gives multiple "Duplicate Page Title" and "Duplicate Page Content" errors when crawled by SEOmoz. I've seached online and found several possible solutions for this, such as: Setting canonical tag Adding these URL variables to Google Webmasters to tell Google to ignore them Change the Title tag in the head dynamically based on what URL variables are present However I am not sure which of these would be best. As far as I can tell the canonical tag should be used when you have the same page available at two seperate URLs, but this isn't the case here as the search results are always different. Adding these URL variables to Google webmasters won't fix the problem in other search engines, and will presumably continue to get these errors in our SEOmoz crawl reports. Changing the title tag each time can lead to very long title tags, and it doesn't address the problem of duplicate page content. I had hoped there would be a standard solution for problems like this, as I imagine others will have come across this before, but I cannot find the ideal solution. Any help would be much appreciated. Kind Regards5 -
Meta descriptions
Whats the deal with the date at the start of the meta descriptions? I have not really looked into this but I'm guessing its a blog thing? Take this search http://www.google.co.uk/search?aq=f&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8&q=6packproject#hl=en&xhr=t&q=interview+with+paul+knight&cp=26&pf=p&sclient=psy&aq=f&aqi=&aql=&oq=interview+with+paul+knight&pbx=1&fp=835cd241c8d51fff The beautifully crafted meta description is now being cut short even though its within the character limit and is now only showing 36 characters! Is there a way to remove this? Thanks in advance
On-Page Optimization | | CraigAddyman0