Confused about meta tags.
-
(Ok, this might be a stupid question.) I am a little confused about the best practice for the Meta Tag. I know they don't have a real effect on ranking. But I am getting "mixed signals" as to their general use. I've pasted the 2 examples of below that are confusing me.
From my Campaign's Crawl Diagnostics: (I have missing Meta Tags)
"Meta description tags, while not important to search engine rankings, are extremely important in gaining user click-through from search engine result pages (SERPs). These short paragraphs are the webmaster's opportunity to advertise content to searchers and let them know exactly what the given page has with regard to what they're looking for"
From The Keyword Optimization Tool: (Avoid Using Meta Keyword Tool)
"Search engines have, for years, ignored the meta keywords tag as a ranking signal. Although it technically does not harm rankings, it can be used by competitors as a method to extract your targeted terms and thus, we recommend against its use. "
I would love to hear opinions on this topic. I am trying to decide wether or not to use unique meta tags on every blog post.
-
Thanks guys. That answered my question!
-
Meta Descriptions, when carefully written, may boost your clickthrough ratio in SERPs. Think of it as a kind of Adwords ad text.
Meta Keywords won't help you with anything, really. The only good usage I can recall is keyword suggestions to social bookmarking sites like Delicious.
-
Meta Descriptions provide google with the text snippet shown in organic results therefore important.
Meta Keywords are no longer a ranking factor and in fact can be a disadvantage as they can give you competitors easy access to your keyword list therefore not only unimportant but a bad idea.
-
The first is talking about Meta Descriptions. The second is talking about Meta Keywords. Two completely different things.
Meta Descriptions are important. Meta Keywords are not.
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
-
Missing Meta description issue reported
Moz says missing meta description, however the meta description exists properly (using yoast plugin) eg of link reported by moz for missing meta description : https://www.basezap.com/reinstall-os-in-vps-using-solusvm-panel/ It is giving same error for many blog posts, as same time, for some articles the issue isn't reported. Although the method for meta description is same for all the posts. Can anyone explain if its a common bug in moz site analysis or I am following something wrong ?
On-Page Optimization | | basezap0 -
How can i define a ALT Tag for Youtube videos?
Hello, When i scan with SEMrush it shows all such pages do not have ALT Tags http://img.youtube.com/vi/iJ4pmmRSZxc/hqdefault.jpg What should the ALT be for them and how can i control as we have 1000's of Youtube videos displayed on various parts of our website Thank you
On-Page Optimization | | ktrinkqao120 -
What are "stop" words in Title Tags?
My client is following his GoDaddy SEO Checklist, and it is reporting 5 errors in Title Tags, saying the Titles contain "stop" words. I can't figure out what these are. Any ideas?
On-Page Optimization | | cschwartzel0 -
Canoncial tag for homepage?
I have a site that gets most of it's traffic from one keyword combination, but I've noticed lately that instead of sending people to the homepage, it's sending people to an internal page. This isn't a problem, except for the fact that all the best link juice and domain authority has been directed at the homepage. There's not a lot of content on the homepage, so is it worth setting up a canonical tag on the homepage for this internal page to ensure that the page authority/link juice helps to boost this page that is already being indexed for the keyword?
On-Page Optimization | | Bigheadigital0 -
International SEO - differentiating Meta data
Hi, We are developing a website for a company based in the US, but that also distributes to the UK. After careful thought, we decided to go with adding subdirectories for the UK pages on the site rather than creating content on a new ccTLD (though they own that domain). 1. How much of the Title Tags, H1, content, needs to be different for UK versions of the same page. Is it enough to simply Geo tag the EN subdirectory in Webmaster Tools? Or do the Title tags and content need to be different in order to avoid keyword cannibalization? 2. Would it be better to create a Landing Page using the ccTLD .co.uk version with information that links to the .com/en version? This would allow the users to see the .co.uk version for trust-building purposes. Or, would it just be better to 301 redirect the .co.uk version to the .com/en? Thanks for your help! Erin
On-Page Optimization | | HiddenPeak0 -
Can a page lose ranking because it has too many bold tags?
I run a product search website for the Engineering Sector. Each of the companies listed on the website has a profile page. This page used to rank very well in google. Over the last couple of weeks these pages disappeared for google i.e they fell about 20 to 30 spots in the search results for relevant keywords like the Manufacturer Name. I was trying to analyze the page and found that Each of the Categories that the manufacturer supports was listed in "bold" and linked to the page for that category. A manufacturer can support up to 20 or 30 categories so this results in about 20 or 30 Bold keywords. Is this a bad practice? Could this be a reason for a drop in ranking or do bold keywords on a page not matter? What are your views?
On-Page Optimization | | raghavkapur0 -
Title Tag Targeting Two Geographic Modifiers
How would you suggest writing a homepage title tag which needs to target both state and city? We are targeting these two phrases: Lincoln personal injury lawyer
On-Page Optimization | | blueroom
Nebraska personal injury lawyer Any thoughts on how you'd write the title tag? I know targeting Nebraska will be challenging but it's what the higher ups want to do. Would you suggest: Lincoln Nebraska Personal Injury Lawyer ?0