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
-
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 -
Should we change branded keywords based on audience knowledge?
Good Morning Moz, Wanted to pose a question to the community that our company has been wrestling with internally for a while now. I think your insights would be tremendously valuable. Our company effectively has two business units, one that is online and one that is offline. Each appeals to a different customer base as well. In one business unit, the larger, more offline and better established of the two, we refer to ourselves as a "manufacturer of high end automobiles" (not true, but using as an example). We've carried this through to the other business unit which is very small, web-based, and growing, but have quickly realized that the majority of would-be customers do not search for "automobiles", they search for "cars." And the keyword volume is night and day. On the order of 5000 searches/mo for automobiles, and 1,000,000 searches/mo for cars (again, not true for these example keywords but this is the actual ratio against our real keywords). So, do we optimize heavily against a lesser known and used keyword, or do we try to target "cars" which sees higher search volume even though it's significantly more competitive? We have this problem with a few different branded keywords, actually, and our search performance reflects as much. If someone were to search for these lesser known keywords they would find us, and we rank well. But the volume isn't there. Thoughts? Thanks in advance.
Conversion Rate Optimization | | J-Me0 -
How can I track the lead to its referring site in my Google Analytics?
Hi, is there a way to track a lead (through funnel setup or similar) so I can see who the referring site is? I want to be able to be able to calculate ROI from display ads, social media initiatives and other partner integrations. Thanks.
Conversion Rate Optimization | | Majsan0 -
Google Analytics: Do 'Goals' actually work?
Hi, Hoping someone can clarify this for me. I've set a goal up whereby the rule is to pick up all pages with "Thank-you" in the destination URL (regular expression). So, when someone fills out a form, it will count as a lead. I'm about 8 weeks in to the campaign now and measuring the last 4 weeks I've had a total of 30 goals completed. I have two issues with this and I really hope someone can help clarify: Using a custom report I can see that I've actually had 52 Visits to the Thank-You pages, 49 Unique Visits and 60 pageviews. Where is Google getting the goals from? I have 51 leads in my inbox from the campaign so far. So, much closer to the above stats in the custom report than in the Goal report. Why is this? Thanking you in advance!
Conversion Rate Optimization | | IndustrySteve0 -
Google Merchant/ Googlebase Images at top of SERPS
Hi We are based in the UK and the new merchant rules have recently been applied here. We offer free shipping but now most of our click throughs come from the images at the top of the SERPS that simply give an image and a price. The prices do not include shipping and there's no indication to the user that shipping is included. Hence our conversion rate from PPC is way down. Is there any way to counter this or do we just need to go back to charging for shipping? Thanks!
Conversion Rate Optimization | | Jonnygeeuk0 -
Thoughts on meta descriptions - best click through rates
Hi All, I recently heard a tip from a prominent SEO'r that meta tags should be custom written by professional copywriters. Well, I want to head down that path. What are your thoughts on these two options: Buy the top-selling <xyz product="">. 20 year warranty, 30 day money guarantee + free, fast shipping! Includes <1-2 features or included accessories of product></xyz> or Buy our top-rated <xyz product="">today</xyz> & save! Over 20 5-star rated reviews + free, fast shipping! Includes <1-2 features or included accessories of product> Would you focus on the warranty, reviews, product accessories, money back guarantee, free shipping over a certain cutoff, customer service (which we have a toll free number for) or another factor? Are there any good articles out there outlining this? Do you think the way I've structured it is good/readable? What about the use of '+' instead of '&'? Is the cutoff limit still 156 chars? Any thoughts/views/ideas are most appreciated! Thanks
Conversion Rate Optimization | | bradkrussell0 -
How can I Monetize My Site with The Type of Traffic it Receives?
I was just in here yesterday asking a question, so I appreciate everyone's patience with this newbie! This is a totally different site that I have a question about so here goes: I have a site that has started to receive large amounts of traffic from an image search. My intention was to use Amazon for products based on my website theme. I haven't been getting traffic from my intended keywords. Now I rank #2 for an image search, loads of traffic! GREAT! But what next? These ppl. aren't looking to buy stuff, they just want the image. Fine, it is a public domain image. I thought of adding some more informational articles and using adsense to bring in some cash. Any opinions on the best way to go with this site? I only have 3 articles up so it could go in any direction from here. Thanks!!!
Conversion Rate Optimization | | iheartkelby0 -
Conversion optimization with Optimizely, impact on SEO
I am looking into signing up with www.optimizely.com for conversion testing. They put scripting on my site which will then redirect half of my site visitors to an alternate home page. The site I want to test on is ranking quite well with Google and I do not want to hurt my rankings. And with this set up,what Google will think is my home page is not and so I am essentially sending visitors to a different page than Google reads as my home page in source code. So, my concern is whether this will have a negative impact on my SEO rankings to redirect 50% of site visitors to a different page using this testing tool? I would use Google Web Site Optimizer, but many of my sites are in Wordpress and it seems that Wordpress and web site optimizer are not so compatible. Advice would be appreciated. Thank you, Robert
Conversion Rate Optimization | | Robertnweil11