Should you give all the posts in a Forum an unique description? Or let it empty so Google can make one with the crawled keywords .... ...
-
To make all descriptions for all forum posts unique is a hell of a job....
One option is to crawl the first 165 characters and turn these automaticly into the meta description of the page.
If Google thinks the meta description is not suitable for the search query, Google will make a own description.In this case all te meta descriptions are unique, like the Google Guidlines want you to do.
How will Google think off the fact when we delete the meta description tag so Google will make all the descriptions by herself?
-
Hi Matt,
Thanks for your complete view on this topic.
You're right, it is not a crawling thing but dus adding a PHP line into the template
Cheers,
Wesley Kelder
-
Thanks for your confirmation!
-
If you are going to create a description then as Todd says, use the first 150-160 characters (note characters - not words). However, you shouldn't need to crawl the site to do that, they should be generated automatically as part of your page template.
I presume your forum generates pages from content in a database. If that is the case (it almost always is) then you just need to adjust the template and the descriptions will automatically appear when the page is output. A simple job for whoever looks after development for you. If you use a common forum platform there is almost certainly as "seo" plugin that handles this for you.
For forum category pages you can probably write these manually. This is where they are probably more likely to do good as well. Personally I would focus on those and not worry too much about adding a meta-description to the thread pages. If you don't mind tools like GWMT and MOZ flagging up the fact that they are missing, their absence is going to have very little impact compared with taking a snippet from the body text.
I know that some people will scream in shock at the thought of not having a meta-desc. I do though notice that even Moz.com don't bother on thread pages (like this one)
-
I would recommend doing just what you suggested - utilize the first 152.
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
-
Keyword cannibalization
Hi, I have two questions regarding keyword cannibalization. 1. I am doing the SEO for a website that sells do-it-yourself packages for heating, bathrooms, ventilation and so on for new houses or for renovations. The most important pages are the product pages (e.g. example.com/products/bathrooms) but there is also a blog divided into categories per product (e.g. example.com/category/bathrooms). The difference is clear: the product page focuses on the product itself, and the blog category page contains all blog posts relating bathrooms (tips, new materials, new innovations,...). My question is if the product page and blog category page can compete with each other for the term bathrooms (although they have different content). Does it help or is it enough to direct internal links from separate blog posts to the most important page (being the product page) and back to avoid my category blog page to compete with my product page? Another possibility would be to use a canonical tag on the category page pointing to the product page, but this actually isn't good practice because it isn't really duplicate content. Third possibility would be to no index the category page. So what is the best solution of the three? 2. A second example of keyword cannibalization can be category archive pages for webshops. If you have a category page example.com/jeans and a subcategory page example.com/jeans/women, is it useful to optimize on both pages for different terms, being jeans for the first page and jeans for women for the second, or will Google not make this distinction because the keyword are too closely related? In other words, is it useful to write content specifically for jeans for women and make a landing page for this keyword, or will this page compete with the category page that has been optimized for just the keyword jeans? In large clothing webshops, you can see for example that there is an optimized page for Nike (content, headings,...) but not for Nike for women or Nike for men. Is this just laziness or is this done exactly to avoid keyword cannibalization? Looking forward to your comments!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Mat_C0 -
Should I worry about rendering problems of my pages in google search console fetch as google?
Some elements are not properly shown when I preview our pages in search console (fetch as google), e.g.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | lcourse
google maps, css tables etc. and some parts are not showing up since we load them asynchroneously for best page speed. Is this something should pay attention to and try to fix?0 -
Can Google penalize your site without sending you a Manual Spam Action?
I had a massive drop in traffic in Mid 2013, and a slow reduction since then. It has sort of leveled off now, but it's not exactly climbing I've never received a manual spam action. The answer to my question seems pretty obvious, now that I write it out... but have you heard of anyone getting penalized, without specifically receiving a warning? Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | DavidC.0 -
I have 2 keywords I want to target, should I make one page for both keywords or two separate pages?
My team sells sailboats and pontoon boats all over the country. So while they are both boats, the target market is two different types of people... I want to make a landing page for each state so if someone types in "Pontoon Boats for sale in Michigan" or "Pontoon boats for sale in Tennessee," my website will come up. But I also want to come up if someone is searching for sailboats for sale in Michigan or Tennessee (or any other state for that matter). So my question is, should I make 1 page for each state that targets both pontoon boats and sailboats (total of 50 landing pages), or should I make two pages for each state, one targeting pontoon boats and the other sailboats (total of 100 landing pages). My team has seen success targeting each state individually for a single keyword, but have not had a situation like this come up yet.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | VanMaster0 -
Google Keyword Planner tool is not correct
Hi All, I know you are all know about Google keyword planner tool. As i know its shows most keywords searched totally wrong. One of the keyword searches less than (<10) but i got 20 exact keyword hits in only one business day and one of the keyword shows more then 10 K searches give us only 3-4 hits in one day.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | dotlineseo0 -
A Keyword Occupied Google Top 7 Ranking. Please Comment........
Hello Everyone, When the whole world is debating on EMD, whether one should use it or avoid. Many bloggers from India still crack a very good traffic from EMD only. Recently, I was researching and found a very impressive link. Keyword: " sad shayari hindi" Google India Search Top 7 position occupied by a single domain with multiple URLs. I would like to request everyone to check the screenshot and comment. VJSQkuy
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | pushkar630 -
Google giving me only partial site links?
Hi Guys, My site is #1 ranked for the term "waiting till marriage," but Google only gives me partial site links. See "Forums - Articles - Questions - Videos" links in attached screenshot. How do I get the full, page-dominating, mini-description-having site links? Any suggestions? Note: I've got a ton of content and decent traffic, but I haven't put much time into developing back links yet. I'm a php developer, but I'm new to professional-level SEO. Any help would be hugely appreciated. Also, sorry about the inflammatory nature of the site. It's not a preachy site; it's just a support group. Hope it doesn't offend. partial-sitelinks.png
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | MikeAM270 -
Magic keywords in Google Webmaster Tools
Hi All, Recently moved a friend to a new WP back-end website as they were on Flash which is pretty, but not necessarily the best for SEO. http://francesphotography.com My question is that once Google finally indexed the site, I noticed in Google Webmaster tools that it found the most significant keyword to be: automatically On the following top pages: | tag/snow-boarding-photography/ |
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BoulderJoe
| tag/style-photography/ |
| tag/underwater-photography/ |
| tag/vacation-photography/ |
| tag/wedding-photography-beaver-creek/ |
| tag/wedding-photography-copper-mountain/ |
| tag/wedding-photography-denver/ |
| tag/wedding-photography/ |
| underwater-photography-scuba-diving-cozumel-mexico/ |
| wedding-photography/ | The goofy thing is I can find anywhere that "automatically" is used - perhaps it is coming from a plug-in or magically keyword beans that Google found? Any guidance is appreciated.0