Head description tag, what now
-
Recently I heard Google virtually dropping the description tag for seo scoring? and it takes the data off the page, however one of my clients description is just pulling a url rather than any content from the page. is there some way thats ethical to suggest a description to google?
-
Thanks - I have always found it a quick win in terms increasing traffic to your site and it is one of the first places I would look at optimising in order to see noticeable benefits.
-
Definitely agree Matt - I find the description tag needs to be optimised to inform users about the site and to inspire click-throughs, as opposed to optimising keywords for Search engines.
good advice
-
The meta description tag hasn't had an impact on your actual ranking in the search results for a very long time. However you should still be utilising this tag and writing a custom description for each page on your clients site in order to help increase your click-through in the search results. I always view it as a call to action to help increase CTR - how can you entice searchers to click your page over others surrounding you?
http://www.seomoz.org/learn-seo/meta-description
Great bit of info by DR Pete of SEOMoz -
http://www.seomoz.org/blog/why-wont-google-use-my-meta-description
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
-
Page Title (Meta descriptions) length... how strict are you?
I have just had a conversation with a client... the gist was this... Is it more important to stay under the 55-60 characters OR go over a bit and have the page title make sense and include the clients company name. The same argument for meta description. I have a client insisting on 55-60 length but the keywords are long and if we use the primary keyword phrase the length is 44 if we use the keyword phrase and add the company name it becomes 64. This is with us trimming it a bit. Anyone else discussed this before?
On-Page Optimization | | JohnW-UK1 -
Anchor Tag around a Div
Just Curious if this is an SEO No-No! I have set up the box to do some cool SEO transitions but am curious if I am loosing on a signifigant amount of internal linking considering anchor text or if Google recognizes the h2 as anchor text. Thanks. [ Article Title Article Synopsis Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exercitation ullamco laboris nisi ut aliquip ex ea commodo consequat. Duis aute irure dolor in reprehenderit in voluptate velit esse cillum dolore eu fugiat nulla pariatur. Excepteur sint occaecat cupidatat non proident, sunt in culpa qui officia deserunt mollit anim id est laborum.](internal-page.html)
On-Page Optimization | | Vspeed0 -
Duplicate title tags, how to solve that?
We are currently running the "yellow pages". The problem is that Google Webmasters reports a lot of duplicate title tags. It's because we have three languages and the title consists of company name. for example: FCR Media Lietuva, UAB (The same in all languages). Of course we make different meta desriptions and so on. How should we solve this problem or should be just leave it as it is?
On-Page Optimization | | FCRMediaLietuva0 -
Using Robots Meta Tag on Review Form Pages
I have gone over this so many times and I just can't seem to get it straight and hope someone can help me out with a couple of questions: Right now, on my dynamically created pages created by filters (located on the category pages) I am using rel""canonical" to point them to their respective category page. Should I also use the robots meta tag as well? Similarly, each product I have on my site has a review form on it and thus is getting indexed by Google. I have placed the same canonical tag on them as well pointing them to the page with the review form on it. In the past I used robots.txt to block google from the review pages but this didn't really do much. Should I be using the robots meta tag on these pages as well? If I used the robots meta tag should I noindex,nofollow? Thanks in advance, Jake
On-Page Optimization | | jake3720 -
Do pages with fewer headings rank higher?
I've found several good quality, high ranking pages with excellent content, 500 to 1000 words. These pages are made by people who obviously know what they're doing. These pages only have one headline the h1 at the top of the page. Some of the sites use CSS div boxes and other things to make text look like a heading but do not have h2 or h3 tags or bigger font size. Could it be that a single headline tells Google that this page is about a single topic and that several sub headings muddy the water and so reduce page rank. Do multiple headings or subheadings affect page rank or is it just a personal style choice?
On-Page Optimization | | PhilipGledhill0 -
Why are my tags causing duplicate error?
Hi, When I run an SEO moz crawl it is picking up duplicate errors from my tags. Currently I have these set as domain url/tag/name of the tag. Is this incorrect? Is there anything I can do to stop this being picked up as duplicate pages? Thanks, Eliz
On-Page Optimization | | econley0 -
URL length... is >115 now >255?
I've been having detailed discussions with a CMS provider on behalf of a client. Long URLs are the least of their problems however, the developer is arguing that Google has amended their algorithm and will now read URLs that are up to 255 characters long. I have stated that as far as I am aware, Google will still not read URLs over 115 characters... Before I stamp my feet, can someone confirm what is actually happening? SEOmoz still classes URLs >115 characters long as an amber issue. Thanks
On-Page Optimization | | Switch_Digital0 -
How many meta tags are appropriate?
How many meta tags are appropriate? There is a page that ranks above me that has many more than I do. It has (I have removed the content of each to give a description of the type of content): I only use meta tags for keywords and description, robots. Should I have more? Thanks.
On-Page Optimization | | scanlin0