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
-
Alt tags advice
Hello, When describe an alt tag from what I understand you need to put your keyword when you can and not literally describe the image. For example let's say I have a picture with 2 cyclists on a road in the dolomites. I would tend to describe it saying " 2 cyclists riding in the dolomites" But for google it is better to describe it saying "Bike riding in Italy and through the dolomites" based on the fact that I am looking to rank on "italy bike tours" Isn't it ? Thank you,
On-Page Optimization | | seoanalytics0 -
The Keyword density in a landing page is very low . by adding meta keyword tag can improve keyword density?
The Keyword density in a landing page is very low . by adding meta keyword tag can improve keyword density?
On-Page Optimization | | socialhi50 -
Using Canonical & INDEX, FOLLOW meta tag
I am sort of new to this, and working with an overseas development team on an eCommerce site. I am curious if the Canonical tag will supersede the tag, or if it is best to remove this tag entirely for duplicate product pages?
On-Page Optimization | | BretDarby1 -
Changed Blog Name - Duplicate Title Tags - Wordpress
Hi friends, I changed my blog name url from "german-shepherd-blog" to "dog-blog." Now I am getting a large amount of duplicate title tags. How do I tell google I made the change? Is there something on my site I need to change?
On-Page Optimization | | Joshlaska0 -
Noindex tags in WordPress
I'm receiving 4 duplicate content warnings from Roger.They are all "www.mysite/tag/tag-name". I'm using WordPress and have Yoast WordPress SEO installed. Should I set the tags to "noindex" in the plugin settings?
On-Page Optimization | | brandzz0 -
Global Meta Data and Titles
I am working on an e-commerce website with Volusion. I have 1 main keyword that I am really trying to focus on for my home page. Last week I was in position #7 for this keyword, and I have never been off the first page of Google for it. Using Volusion you can Globally set a Title and meta description for any pages that do not already have a title or description. I noticed my Global title had the same keyword as I was using for my home page and thought that, that might be taking away some importance from my keyword, so I changed the Global Title to a different keyword. When I looked at my SEO moz rankings today, which crawled last night it said My keyword was #24 on Google. I checked and as of now I am in position #11. Like I said before, I have never not been on the first page for this keyword. Does anyone think that changing the Global title may have been the cause for this??
On-Page Optimization | | DTOSI0 -
Keyword confusion
Thanks for taking the time to read through this. I'm currently optimizing a website and have a few structural questions: How should one view targeting keywords with respect to the home page of any given site? EG -> If the home page has the preferred keywords at the beginning of title and the page follows most if not all the recommendations from SEOMOZ tools, why are sub pages outranking my root domain for the set of keywords I'm after? When sub pages use my homepage keyword as the 2nd keyword in its respective title, does that give the overall homepage more power for the keyword it's after? EG. Homepage Title "ABC DEF - DEF ABC - XYZ | Company name I'm targeting "ABC DEF" for the home page Subpage title -> "DEF ABC - ABC DEF - XYZ | Company Name. The sub page keyword is "DEF ABC"
On-Page Optimization | | FPK0 -
Curious meta-tag
Has anyone met this meta tag? <meta name="ranking" content="Top10, Page=1" /> I imagine it has no effect but I'm curios where did it came from, i saw it on many sites
On-Page Optimization | | seo.academy0