Meta Description Lengths?
-
Hi All,
I've heard so many different opinions on meta description lengths. What's your general consensus? Some say up to 250 characters, Moz says around 150-160 characters, and Google typically truncates to no more than, say 160 characters.
One might say then that clearly you shouldn't go above what Google shows, but my experience shows that it's not a deal breaker at all for ranking.
Thoughts?
-
Hit the nail on the head here! It's all about improving click through rates, and enticing the user to click through, after reading an enticing meta description
-
-
Official Google does truncate at around 160 so i usually shoot for that. I mean after all if our goal is to always do things that are useful for the web, I have to question how useful it is to go beyond what Google will use in search, but there is no penalty for going over 160 characters.
-
Meta descriptions play an important role whether or not they are counted in ranking. When done well, they can cause a searcher to click on your result over the others. If the clever description you write for your page is too long, it will get truncated or Google might choose to show something else entirely (which it might do anyway, especially depending on the search term). I like to use this tool when writing page titles and descriptions: http://www.seomofo.com/snippet-optimizer.html It allows you to see what your result might look like in Google's serps (it uses 70 characters as the allowed title length and 156 as the allowed description length).
-
Makes sense guys. Thank you.
-
I would only do this if it sits with the general theme of what is being said. Don't just try to make it fit just so it's in there.
-Andy
-
We generally keep our branding in the page titles as the suffix and focus on keyword matching in the meta descriptions.
-
Thanks, guys.
On that note, do you worry about branding in the meta description for non-brand queries?
-
We always stick with around 155 characters with the most important information in the first 60. This is because if Google decides to show big sitelinks, your meta descriptions will get truncated even further, thus showing less characters.
You are correct that meta descriptions have no weight on ranking. But, CTR does and this can be directly impacted by your meta description. Therefore, they continue to be worth your time to do them well. I personally don't think spending time writing over 155 characters is worth it because the chances of Google displaying these extra characters (at least in a way that will appear clean) is slim. You are better off letting them determine what to show based on user query and page content at that point.
-
Err on the side of caution where there is any doubt at all. No-one really know if Google use this in some capacity, so take no chances and keep it all clean.
-Andy
-
Thanks, Andy.
They say that the meta description isn't necessarily looked at, but Matt Cutts says it's important to have them. So, I opt to have unique ones for my most important pages at least: http://searchenginewatch.com/article/2308339/Matt-Cutts-Create-Unique-Meta-Descriptions-for-Your-Most-Important-Pages
You're right...maybe we shouldn't go above 160 characters? All else...?
-
Google say they don't use this in SEO at all, and if we believe that is plays no part, then you have a maximum of 150-160 characters to play with. If you go over this, it doesn't get shown anyway, so all you are doing is creating content that will never be read, or that 'might' get seen as an attempt to keyword spam.
Stick to the threshold and you can't go wrong
-Andy
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 same description in the directories of all affect SEO or not? - But unique on the website
Hi, I would like to do some directories. When I checked with a person for his recent work, he has given the same description in 50 directories he has done for a client. Does this affect SEO or not?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | AnuManish0 -
Meta Description Length is Doubling (Like Twitter)
Just saw this: https://imgur.com/a/KQ0Hf This is the first time I have ever seen a meta description that long. Ever. I haven't seen any other sites covering this. That's a 275-character-length description that is not being truncated. Thoughts? I'm freakin' out.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | TaylorRHawkins1 -
Does Google want contact numbers in the meta description?!
Reading up it seems like there's complete free reign to enter what you want in the meta description and they are not considered a direct ranking signal However I have added contact numbers to the meta descriptions for around 20 reasonably high ranking pages for my company and it seems to have had a negative effect (taken screen grabs and previous rankings) More strangely when you 'inspect' the page the meta description features the desired number yet when you find the page in the serps the meta description just does not feature the number (page has been cached and the description does not carry on) I'm wondering whether such direct changes are seen as spam and therefore negative to the page?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Jacksons_Fencing1 -
I'm changing title tags and meta tags, url, will i loose my ranking?
Hi Guys QUESTION: I'm currently going through a re-design for my new website that was published in November 2014 - since launching we found there were many things we needed to change, our pages were content thin being one of the biggest. I had industry experts that came in and made comments on the title tags lacking relevance for eg: our title tag for our home page is currently "Psychic Advice" most ideal customers don't search "Psychic Advice" they search more like "Online Psychic Reading" or Psychic Readings" I noticed alot of my competitors also were using title tags such as Online Psychic Readings, Free Psychic Readings etc so it brings me to my question of "changing the title tags around. The issue is, im ranking for two keywords in my industry, online psychics and online psychic readings in NZ. 1. Our home page and category pages are content thin.... so hoping that adding the changes will create perhaps some consistency also with the added unique and quality content. Here is the current website: zenory. co.nz and the new one is www.ew-zenory.herokuapp.com which is currently in development I have 3 top level domains com,com.au, and co.nz Is there anyone that can give me an idea if I were to change my home page title tag to **ZENORY | Online Psychic Readings | Live Psychic Phone and Chat ** If this will push my rankings down though this page will have alot more valuable content etc? For obvious reasons im going to guess it will make drop, I'm wondering though if it is worth changing the title tags and meta descriptions around or leaving it as is if its already doing well? How much of a difference do title tags and meta descriptions really make? Any insight into this would be great! Thanks
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | edward-may1 -
4 websites - meta titles and descriptions
I manage four separate websites/brands that all focus on the same topics and have the same achitecture. I am trying to improve each site's meta title and description, page by page, that I inherited from another before me. My question is, how different should each title/description be from one another for the same page type? Do the search engines consider this heavily in their decision process of who to show on SERPs? Am i able to simply swap out the brand name in the metas and call it done or should each meta be unique? if unique, how unique? As you can imagine, since each page is essentially the same with the same overall content and layout targeting the same keywords, it is very difficult to rewrite metas four unique ways. I greatly appreciate any advice on how you would approach this project.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | dsinger0 -
Why isn't Moz recognizing meta description tags using SLIM?
Hey All, I keep getting reports from Moz that many of my pages are missing meta description tags. We use SLIM for our website, and I'm wondering if anyone else has had the same issue getting Moz to recognize that the meta descriptions exist. We have a default layout that we incorporate into every page on our site. In the head of that layout, we've included our meta description parameters: meta description ='#{current_page.data.description}' Then each page has its own description, which is recognized by the source code http://fast.customer.io/s/viewsourcelocalhost4567_20140519_154013_20140519_154149.png Any ideas why Moz still isn't recognizing that we have meta descriptions? -Nora, Customer.io
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | sudonim0 -
What EMD Meta Title should we use and what about getting links to the same C-Block IP?
Situation: Recently I encountered two problems with both internal and external SEO for my company websites.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | TT_Vakantiehuizen
This Dutch company has four websites on one server. Three closely related EMD(Exact Match Domain) websites and one overarching website. (Holiday homes rental websites) Vakantiehuizen-Verhuur.nl (overarching)
Vakantiehuizen-Frankrijk.nl (EMD)
Vakantiehuizen-Italie.nl (EMD)
Vakantiehuizen-Spanje.nl (EMD) Question 1:
What would be a preferable Meta Title for the EMD websites (homepage/subpages)? Keep in mind that the domains are EMD. The homepage will target the most important keywords and should not compete with subpages. Options for the homepage:
1. Vakantiehuizen Frankrijk | Alle vakantiehuizen in Frankrijk op een rij!
2. Vakantiehuizen Frankrijk | Vakantiehuizen-Frankrijk.nl onderdeel van Vakantiehuizen-Verhuur.nl
3. Suggestions? Options for the subpages:
1. Vakantiehuis Normandie | Vakantiehuizen Frankrijk
2. Vakantiehuis Normandie | Vakantiehuizen-Frankrijk.nl
3. Suggestions? And concerning the keywords in the beginning; is it wise to use both plural and singular terms in the meta title? For Example:
Hotel New York. Best hotels in New York | Company Name Question 2: Many SEOs state that getting (too many) links from the same C-Block IP is bad practice and should be avoided. Is this also applicable if one website links out to different websites with the same C-Block IP? Thus, website A, B and C (on the same server) link to website D (different server) could be seen as spam but is this the same when website D links to website A, B and C?0 -
Can you use the image description for IMG ALT?
ello ello! We're running an ecommerce site with thousands of products. None of the product pages have an IMG ALT. We're been thinking about an IMG ALT rule to apply to all product page images. Every image currently has a detailed caption so the thought was, why don't we use the description as the IMG ALT? It's perfect as it explains the image. Now the thing is, the length of the description, some of them come to 150 - 200 characters with spaces. Do you think this is too much? Also, would having a caption and the IMG ALT be the same cause issues? Have you guys employed any rules for IMG ALT in a bulk way?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Bio-RadAbs0