Can Changing Meta Descriptions Negatively Impact SERP's?
-
I have just had a page start ranking well in key SERP's and I would like to change the meta description and add a price as we are extremely competative in that line.
Could changing the meta description now a page is ranking negatively impact the SERP placing?
Does anyone have any experience with this?
-
Hey Robert,
I was wondering what your experiences where with the changing meta descriptions?
My team was looking to do something similar with one of our sites and we are worried about changing meta descriptions and whether that would affect us negatively.
Thanks
-
Good point Lewis.
How do so what code do I use? (£
I don't have much experience with this.
-
The general line is that we should design for the user and not the search engine so if a meta description is compelling and attracts users then that would be exactly what you are doing.
If you believe that putting the price will increase the click through then I would go for it.
Had some advice from Will Critchlow when I asked about the use of the £ symbol in meta descriptions and he said that we should "use HTML encoding (£ rather than £). We tend to advise going for ASCII only as character encoding opens you up to a world of pain, but HTML entities should generally be fine"
-
I have added a price to the Meta Description.. as I believe we are selling this product @ the cheapest price in the country..
I agree it could bring forward any change in any case.
What do you think googles attitude is towards promotional Meta descriptions?
Hopefully a good meta tag that gets a click through would be taken into account ahead of a promotional meta description that mentions price.
What do you think?
-
I can see what you're getting at, but I agree with Lewis-SEO. Given that meta description is not visible on the page any changes (other than perhaps old school spammy) are just noted and displayed. If you were to change something on-page at the same time it may well get re-assessed, but that's not what we were discussing.
Even if it were to trigger a re-assessment all it would be doing is reviewing that page and putting it in it's "correct" place in the SERPs. Had you not done anything to it, it would still have dropped as soon as it was re-crawled regardless, all initiating a crawl would do is bring forward the inevitable.
Of course if we go on the theory that Google has started using user data; if the meta description changed how the page converted or how people reacted to the page (and you could check your analytics) it could effect your rankings.
Basically if users are now leaving your page in droves because of a misleading meta description that may have a knock on effect.
-
I guess what I mean is...
I know it is not supposed to influence SERP's but
Logically if a meta description changes radically I would imagine there would be some mechanisim thats is triggered for at least reviewing the SERP's placement for that page.
So the content of the meta description is irrelevant but the fact it may have changed would flag up somewhere in the Algo?
Its just a thought...
-
The meta description tag doesn't influence SERP's.
As you know search engines often use it as the description for your page in search results.As such a relevant, unique, compelling meta description can have a positive influence on how many clicks you get on your search listing.
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
-
We changed our domain, I used the move tool in Google Search Console and I am having our site redirected and go daddy, and now I spoke with someone who suggest we do a 301 redirect for all pages on our site and I’m not sure that’s the correct move.
We just changed our domain name after 15 years. when I bought the new domain name I called Go Daddy and they instructed me to contact my google G sweet admin account and change all of our emails over which I did and then I went into Shopify who is my host and changed my primary domain there and then I went back to Go Daddy and had my old website forwarded to my new site. since then there has been nothing but problems with Google. my product feed from my merchant center account has been suspended three or four times now, I tried to rename and move all of my Google accounts from my old domain to my new one, but I am not an SEO person... after making the changes I have started google chats with analytics department with the merchant center with Google as they all keep saying that it looks fine but I’m not convinced because the product feed keeps getting disapproved. So I posted an ad for help and the Guy I spoke with suggested I do a 301 redirect for every single page on my old site, But I’m concerned that might confuse things further? I’ve already started the move in Google Search console And in Shopify I added the old domain back into the domains section and am having it redirectEd that way too... I guess I’m just looking to know which way I should proceed, any and all advice is warmly welcome thank you in advance Maureen
Conversion Rate Optimization | | TooFast130 -
Better Graphic Design-Impact on SEO?
Will improving our site's graphic design but keeping identical structure, tags and text result in better Google? Are lower bounce rates greater time spent on a site by visitors rewarded by Google n the form of higher ranking? We are a commercial real estate brokerage firm in Manhattan and plan on making the following changes: -Much larger photos for listings
Conversion Rate Optimization | | Kingalan1
-Lighter cleaner design with more open white areas
-Use of more visible fonts
-Better forms
-Potentially less text and more emphasis on product, which in our case are real estate listints. Our existing site: w w w . m e t r o - m a n h a t t a n . com is a bit ordinary and uninviting. The redesign will have a concept similar to
http://www.dernieretage-paris.com/
The theme behind this real estate site is the city itself, which is quite clever and applicable to Manhattan. Our home page as well as other URLs use lots of text. If we reduce text and use more images to make the pages more engaging, will our organic ranking decline? If we reduce text can we compensate by fuller completion of meta tags? Any thoughts???0 -
What is the Impact of Content Personalization on SEO?
I am using Optimizely to serve personalized experiences to our website users. Is there an impact on SEO ranking? The personalized content is dynamically changed on our website and the URL does not change. Thank you
Conversion Rate Optimization | | Dilgul0 -
Any PPC Companies out there who can work with small accounts
I have a story , 18 months ago we had our own PPC adwords account, we had been running at £3.20 CPA for quite some time and we were very happy. Sometimes CPA would go up , sometimes down, but not my very much. One unfortunate day google rang, and told us , that our CPA should ne £2.50 and that we needed expert advice that they couldn't actually give us, we needed an expert. To cut a long story short and after 5 very expert companies have messed with our account, we had varying results. One company left us with 2 leads per day at £10 a lead !!!! , one did better than that and setup a £3k adwords account using their expert advice, blew it all and said "times are tough" sorry !!! The last company was actually the best, great guy , but I think we are two small for him, we have varying results, one day we get 30 leads, the next we get 10 , one day its £3.50 CPA , next its £7.00 . But on the whole very happy with his initial work We just want a company that doesn't Lie to us , tells us straight , and can use their expertise to get us a CPA of £3.50 and help us get upto 50 leads a day, if not more. Thanks Hope that makes sense Nick
Conversion Rate Optimization | | NickKer
systems direct ltd0 -
How Would You Market A Photo Of Jay-Z Wearing Your Client's Apparel?
If Jay-Z was spotted wearing your client's sweatshirt, how would you maximize the marketing potential of this photo and opportunity to sell more sweatshirts?
Conversion Rate Optimization | | farmiloe0 -
Bounce Rates Impact on SEO?
What impact does bounce rate have on a websites rankings? What is an ideal bounce rate percentage to shoot for? What is the best way to reduce bounce rate on a site?
Conversion Rate Optimization | | bronxpad0 -
Is it better to get a new site instead of maintaining a category? I'm stuck.
If you had a website "Food for Dogs" and: Food for German shepherds was improving in search traffic & conversions Snack Food for German shepherds had no change and never resulted in conversions but resulted in many leads for #1 Food for Poodles was unchanged but improving conversions Here's the kicker... Food Container for Dogs was super high traffic but with no conversions or any activity to other categories Would you redirect "food container for dogs" to a different site and delete that tab from the original site completely? It's still related but does not offer any $ value or leads to any of the other categories. Just note that we have a different interest in this category that will support the other categories at one time, but not any time soon. We also have a major group on LinkedIN that's grown to thousands of members for the "food container for dogs" category. On top of it all, the "food container for dogs" has been increasing in rank on Google for several keyphrases to positions 2-5 (nationally) Other important question: Would keeping "food container for dogs" influence the ranking of the other keywords? (by dilution of the site's PR or any other reason?)
Conversion Rate Optimization | | HMCOE0 -
How can I improve my Adsense CTR / CPC?
Here's one page where my Ads' setup can be seen: http://www.gameseducativos.com/guarda-do-zoologico/quebra-cabecas
Conversion Rate Optimization | | rpedri0