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.
Adding CTAs in Meta Descriptions
-
Whats peoples opinions about putting Call To Cations CTAs in Meta Descriptions, and does this ever occur a Google penalty, as it can sometimes look a bit clickbait.
For example I am looking at a site which currently has this meta description
Meta Description: For more information on our sustainable, natural office furniture, click here to get in contact.
Is this kind of description ranking unfriendly, Ive seen them used a lot but IM not a big fan of this myself.
Any thoughts?
-
It's worth adding a call to action to a meta description because it can help improve the CTR.
Our business, sells garden offices, and we added new meta titles, and descriptions, which were much better written, the CTR improved.
-
CTA's in MD's work, so we use them often, but usually at the end. So a full MD with details about the page and then a CTA at the end. "Contact us today for a free Quote" etc. But I agree with Joe I also try and use the targetted customer query once in the MD together with synonyms if it works...
Hope that assists.
-
Hi there!
Improving Meta descriptions in order to get higher CTR won't be penalized by Google unless you do something black hat or include some forbidden words.
My experience showed:
1- There is always a set of title+meta description that can optimize CTR for a single page. Remember to focus on the main keyword, as a page can rank for several search terms.
2- Improving CTR doesn't always get better rankings, but hell it brings more traffic! That's what you should be aiming, not only better rankings.As Nozzle said, experiment carefully and make one change at a time.
Hope it helps.
Best luck.
Gaston -
IMHO use meta descriptions to sell what's on the webpage, learn from the good Google Ads copy, including CTA's isn't necessary I personally focus on keyword insertion instead.
-
Meta descriptions do not affect your rankings whatsoever. Well...at least not directly. Some argue that higher click through rates can increase your rankings.
Whether that is true or not, you want to write meta descriptions that do entice people to click on your listing so that you get more traffic from the SERPs and a lot of times including a call to action can increase your click through rate.
My suggestion is to test different meta descriptions on pages that have good rankings until you find the one that has the highest click through rate. You can monitor a specific page's click through rate in Google Search Console.
Keep track of when Google re-crawls your page so you know what dates to analyze when trying to figure out the CTR of each meta description test. Keep in mind that title tag changes will affect your CTR as well so only change one or the other at a time to get an accurate reading.
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
-
Use of '&' in meta title
Hi, I know that use of '&' would be helpful to save space and also add more keyword variation to the title tag. But just want to make sure if it matters if I use '&' in most of my title tags? And also is it common to use more than & in one title? Would the following title be different in Google's perspective regardless of the title length? I am thinking they are all targeting the keywords 'fruit cake' and 'fruit bread', but the first one is the best. buy fruit cake & bread buy fruit cake & fruit bread buy fruit cake and fruit bread Thanks in advance.
On-Page Optimization | | russellbrown0 -
Different meta-description per country?
I have this .com domain which is the corporate website. Next to this domain, we also have local domains. We would like to test with a different meta-description per country on this one corporate .com domain. Does anyone knows if this is possible and how we could integrate this?
On-Page Optimization | | WeAreDigital_BE0 -
How often should we refresh or rewrite product descriptions?
is it good practice to rewrite our product descriptions every few months? Thanks
On-Page Optimization | | onwardsandupwards0 -
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 -
Do I need a Meta description for every page?
HI Guys, We have just developed a new website and I'm looking to add meta descriptions with relevant key words to the pages . As the site has over 80 pages it is quite an undertaking and i was wandering if pages, such as the shopping cart and FAQ's etc, need meta descriptions as well? Thanks in advance : ) Pete
On-Page Optimization | | dawsonski0 -
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 -
What does the "base href" meta tag do? For SEO and webdesign?
I have encounter the "base href" on one of my sites. The tag is on every page and always points to the home URL.
On-Page Optimization | | jmansd0 -
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