Two basic questions re. Crawl Diagnostic results
-
I'm a novice...I've just run my crawl diagnostics and I wonder how important is it to a) Have meta-descriptions on every page, b) Have all titles less than 70 characters?
Thanks in advance. Dan.
-
Dan,
the meta description is your chance to pitch to your customer and nothing more. It is entirely possible to throw away the benefit a #1 ranking can give you in click through if you meta description lets you down.
Also for me it is very important to keep within the 70 characters limit for the page title as having overly long titles can not only not read correctly in the search results but you may be diluting your affectiveness on targeting a page for a certain topic both to the user and the SE's
-
Thanks both of you, that definitely helps me. Dan.
-
Meta-descriptions are an opportunity for you to instruct the SE's what your page is about specifically. If you leave it blank - they will extract an excerpt that they think applies to the page. Whilst this is ok, it might not be exactly what you want to display on the SERPS.
Use the meta descriptions to make the most of the SERPS page, if you page is about blue widget investment - then your description should have text that is relevant to that term, and contain text that includes or is at least similar to the term - if it is a large page and you leave the field blank - the SE's can pull in a snippet of an entirely different part of the page that isn't relevant at all.
As for titles - If you have old pages that have long titles it can be a bit of a drag redoing them - but if you are continually producing content I would suggest restricting to sub 70 characters from here on from an "adhering to best practices" point of view.
-
In terms of pure SEO Meta Descriptions will have no effect on your rankings. But they are potentially your first chance of presenting your content to users convincing them to come to your site, so in that respect they are important. Search engines will use page content as a meta description if there isn't one and that can be fine, but it isn't always what you want.
Titles are a little more tricky, if you have keywords beyond those 70 characters they are unlikely to be "read" by the spiders, and that is less than ideal, so it's important to try to say what you need within that 70 character limit.
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
-
How to keep NAP if my company has two locations?
Hello, I am a bit puzzled since the company I'm working with has recently opened a new location. The company's first location is listed in all local directories. Could you please advise me what to do to make 2 locations visible and not to mess up with keeping same NAP all over the web? Most directories do not simply have the option to add another location. I had to open a brand new Google Business page for the second location (while using the same name brand). I suppose I am getting into trouble with this?
Technical SEO | | kirupa0 -
My Last Question Regarding URLs - I Promise...
Hello I've recently asked the community which urls would be best for a company with a variety of wood flooring products. This question relates to "keywords" within the url which relates to each and every product. Which would you choose, 1. a or b? 2. a or b? 1. - Product: CIRO a. www.thewoodgalleries.co.uk/engineered-flooring/rustic-oak-ciro - Keyword Match, YES. "Rustic Oak Flooring" b. www.thewoodgalleries.co.uk/engineered-flooring/ciro - Keyword Match, NO. "Rustic Oak Flooring" 2. - Product: VOGUE a. www.thewoodgalleries.co.uk/engineered-flooring/prefinished-oak-vogue - Keyword Match, YES. "Pr_efinished Oak Flooring"_ b. www.thewoodgalleries.co.uk/engineered-flooring/vogue - Keyword Match, NO. "Pr_efinished Oak Flooring"_ Although seemingly a basic part of SEO, I find myself revisiting this question time and time again - what is really better for SEO? Shorter URL's or "slightly" longer to achieve keyword match? _After researching many keywords which we have chosen to use as part of this project, it seems to have any chance of ranking on the first page, the key word (or part of the keyword) must appear within the url. _ I would like to get some "extra" clarification. Thanks for your help!
Technical SEO | | GaryVictory0 -
Sitemap question
Hello, In your opinion what is better for a root domain and micro-sites using sub-domains?, to have a single sitemap for the root domain including all links to the sub-domains or to have a separate sitemap for each sub-domain? Thanks Arnold
Technical SEO | | arnoldwender0 -
Site Penalized - 301 Redirect Question
Hello, We have a website that was penalized roughly two years by Google for "Unnatural Links"... We are experiencing a lot of problems with this site, completely unrelated to the penalty or SERPS, and we're debating doing a 301 Re-direct to another site we own that is totally clean and has no "Unnatural Links". If we do a 301 from the penalized site to our alternative website, will there be any cross-contamination? Will the penalty carry over to our other site? Please let me know what you guys think. Thanks
Technical SEO | | Prime850 -
Rel canonical question
Hi, I have an e-commerce site hosted on Volusion currently the rel canonical link for the homepage points to www.store.com/default.asp. I spoke with the Volusion support people and they told me that whether the canonical link points to store.com/default.asp or store.com does not really matter as long as there is a canonical version. I thought this sounded odd, so looked at other websites hosted on volusion and some sites canonicalize to default.asp and others .com. (volusion.com canonicalizes to .com fwiw). The question is...I have a majority of my external links going to www.store.com , and since that page has default.asp as it canonical version, am I losing link juice from those incoming links? If so, should I change the canonical link? If I do what are the potential issues/penalties? Hopefully this question makes sense and thanks in advance.
Technical SEO | | IOSC0 -
Indexation question
Hi Guys, i have a small problem with our development website. Our development website is website.dev.website.nl This page shouldn't be indexed bij Google but unfortunately it is. What can i do to deindex it and ask google not to index this website. In the robots.txt or are there better ways to do this? Kind regards Ruud
Technical SEO | | RuudHeijnen0 -
Frustrating Local Seo Question
I have just lost the top stop on Google Places (Pack 7) for one of my clients. The company that took it came out of nowhere to take the top stop. Now I don't mind getting out ranked when someone has worked hard to out rank me but what is frustrating is this site scores terrible across the board on just about every score that is supposed to determine on and off page ranking factors. The only place it outscores is in the link department but the site is so new there is no data available in OSE. The site has 0's and 1's for PA, MR and MT plus the keyword (kitchen remodeling) that it is taking the top spot for scores and F in the SEOMoz on page report card while the page that I optimized for this very same keyword scores an A. Plus this site has zero citations according to Bright Local Data. What Gives? Here is a little bit of data: Keyword: Kitchen Remodeling My Clients website is http://www.tandmkitchens.com Competitors website: http://www.njkitchendesigns.com I'm kicking his butt in every category except Domain Age and inbound link total, his inbound link total is 409 but it's only from 2 domains.
Technical SEO | | fun52dig
Any thoughts on how this is possible would be greatly appreciated. Thanks all and Merry Christmas!
Gary1 -
Google showing former meta tags in search results inspite of new tags being crawled by it
I had changed the meta tags for a site www.aztexsodablast.com.au about a month back and Google has also crawled those new tags but in search results when I search for the term 'Aztex Sodablast' it is continuing to show the old tags while on the site, the new tags are being displayed. What may be the issue and how could I correct the problem?
Technical SEO | | pulseseo0