Using Product Descriptions in Meta Description
-
Hi All
We have over 10000 Products and a while ago we spent some time adding Product Descriptions to the Product Pages, For Example we have
Product - Black Snazaroo Face Paint
Product Description - Great for Childrens parties, fundraising events, Halloween or other festive faces. An easy makeup to apply and remove. All Snazaroo face paints are Non toxic, Fragrance free and Skin friendly. Snazaroo is suitable for all skin types, however it is always recommended you do a skin patch test on a small area before full application.
Unfortuantly our Meta Descriptions really need some work, for example this same page contains the following meta descriptions
We realise this could be holding our site back.
Is it ok to use the same Product Description inside the Meta Description Tags also, for example can we use the Meta Description for this Page -
Thanks
-
Thank you Everybody for taking the time to Answer our Question
-
Its a tough call. Honestly I think it comes down to "Is it worth the time to optimize every page?" I would say yes, if you have the financial ability to do so. I don't think that Google looks at pages individualistically, and looks at the entire site as a whole. If you increase the entire quality score of your site, that will help you more than optimizing a few, or even in your case a few hundred pages. Chances are your competitors will not be going through the same amount of SEO work, and your site ranking will improve. We have tested this theory on many ecommerce sites hosted by us, and seen excellent results. Many smaller websites out rank the leaders like Home Depot, Ebay, Amazon, etc consistantly.
For your meta descriptions I would do something more like:
I know Matt Cutts states that meta descriptions don't have an impact on ranking, but I just flat out don't agree. Depending upon what you search for, you can clearly see the bolded and highlighted words in the link URLs, description, page title etc. Look at the bolded words in the sample above to think of what the description covers.
1. Childrens face paint
2. Halloween face paint
3. Black face paint
4. Face paintIf you so choose, you could also leave the descriptions blank, as long as your on-page descriptions absolutely rock. One rule we always follow internally: "You never know where Google will pull content from, so make sure anywhere they can is awesomely optimized" This would include titles, meta, on page, keywords, everything. Hope this helps!
-
According to Matt Cutts, "... there are really only two viable options. You can either have unique metatag descriptions, or you can choose not to put any metatag description at all. Definitely don’t have duplicate metatag descriptions."
Often the best approach for e-commerce sites is to leave meta descriptions blank. Google will dynamically create them using text it derives from your page content, often highlighting the user's own search terms. I say that b/c: (a) it's a huge effort to come up with unique meta descriptions for thousands of products; (b) allowing Google to create them better ensures searchers will see their own search terms fed back to them in search results; and (c) thereby increases click thru rates.
-
Meta descriptions do not effect your page optimization in the sense that a search engine is effected by it, but it will effect how often people click to your site as the meta description is the copy a person is shown. You should make your descriptions informative and truthful so that it accurately portrays what each page has to offer giving a potential visitor the best ability to judge what content will be on the page (and thereby lowering bounces/re-searches). This being said you should write custom meta descriptions, not just let it truncate content already on your page. I would start with products that are relevant to the most used keywords and work backwards, if you dedicate yourself to doing at least 20 descriptions a week you will have all of your legacy products done in a year.
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 create a dynamic visual sitemap using Google sheets?
Does anyone have a solution where you can use a listing of page names with tiers in a Google spreadsheet and have it dynamically appear in a visual sitemap architecture format within in a Google document? Thanks in advance Moz community!
Content Development | | peteboyd0 -
Duplicate product description on the same page
Hello, I've got a really simple a basic question : is it an issue to put an excerpt of a text at the begining of a page, with a "jump to full text" link at the end of the excerpt ? So the first part of the text will be duplicated. A solution would be to hide a part of the text and reveal it with a "read more" button, but we don't want to do that, we want users to be able to read the full text just by scrolling + we want to put an excerpt "above-the-fold" content It's a product page. A second question : we've got duplicate content between our brand category pages, and the related product page, because the presentation text of the brand is shown on the product page + on the brand category page (it's presentations of distilleries, so it's a valuable content for the customer, we want to show it directly on the product page). Do you think it's a big issue ? Or maybe we can think : "ok, there is plenty of other text on those pages, so it won't matter" ?
Content Development | | Colage1 -
What is the Best Content Spinner to Use?
I'm looking for a good article spinner. I used to use Spin Doc but it's not as intuitive anymore.
Content Development | | 01023451 -
How to handle product pages with similar information
We have thousands of product pages with similar information but differentiating variables such as length/width. Example: http://www.savvyboater.com/store/p/2100-Cover-for-V-Hull-Fishing-Boat-with-Side-Console-O-B-14-X-74-.aspx http://www.savvyboater.com/store/p/2101-Cover-for-V-Hull-Fishing-Boat-with-Side-Console-O-B-15-X-76-.aspx http://www.savvyboater.com/store/p/2102-Cover-for-V-Hull-Fishing-Boat-with-Side-Console-O-B-16-X-92-.aspx http://www.savvyboater.com/store/p/2103-Cover-for-V-Hull-Fishing-Boat-with-Side-Console-O-B-17-X-92-.aspx We built individual products instead of grouped products because we recommend specific part numbers for specific make, model, year boats through our finder tool. These pages have recently started showing up in SEOmoz as duplicate content and we are looking for solutions to solve it. We have considered creating a "parent page" that lists all sizes and then using a rel canonical on each individual page to tell google that the parent page is the preferred page. Any thoughts or other ideas on this?
Content Development | | ironpac0 -
If we use content copied from another site ( assuming we have not plagerized), does it hurt our Google Rankings?
We have permission from another company to copy their content and use it on our site. This happens when we are describing a manufacturer's product and we copy pages from their site and add these pages to our site in order to describe the product we are selling. Is this considered duplicate content? Can this practice hurt us?
Content Development | | huskers0 -
Can you use creative commons non-commercial images on a company blog?
Does anyone know if it is okay to use creative commons images on your company blog if they are under the Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.0 Generic license. Technically you are using it on a commercial site, but you are not directly making money from the image or selling it.
Content Development | | ProjectLabs0 -
Meta Title and Description Placement in Wordpress
I noticed in wordpress code that the <title>and <description> are not at the top of the code and rather located a ways down the code and not displayed how previous sites used to be.</p> <p>Does this still matter for SEO.</p> <p>I thought it should have been,</p> <div id="syn_row5" class="SYN_TXT"><span class="HTML_TXT"><span class="HTML_TAG"><<span class="HTML_ELM">title</span>></span><span class="HTML_TAG"></<span class="HTML_ELM">title</span>></span></span></div> <div class="SYN_ROW"> <div id="syn_row6" class="SYN_TXT"><span class="HTML_TXT"><span class="HTML_TAG"><<span class="HTML_ELM">meta</span> <span class="HTML_ATR">name</span>=<span class="HTML_VAL">"Description"</span> <span class="HTML_ATR">content</span>=<span class="HTML_VAL">""</span> /></span></span></div> <div class="SYN_TXT"><span class="HTML_TXT"><span class="HTML_TAG"> <div id="syn_row6" class="SYN_TXT"><span class="HTML_TXT"><span class="HTML_TAG"><<span class="HTML_ELM">meta</span> <span class="HTML_ATR">name</span>=<span class="HTML_VAL">"Keywords"</span> <span class="HTML_ATR">content</span>=<span class="HTML_VAL">""</span> /> (if still needed ?)</span></span></div> <div class="SYN_TXT"><span class="HTML_TXT"><span class="HTML_TAG"><span class="HTML_TXT"><span class="HTML_TAG"> </span></span></span></span></div> <div class="SYN_TXT"><span class="HTML_TXT"><span class="HTML_TAG"><span class="HTML_TXT"><span class="HTML_TAG"><span class="HTML_TXT"><span class="HTML_TAG">Is there a way to do this in Wordpress? Or does placment not matter anymore?</span></span></span></span></span></span></div> </span></span></div> </div></title>
Content Development | | hfranz0 -
What are the best reasons not to use Wordpress as a CMS?
I'm a big fan of Wordpress (.org) as a content management system. However, I recognize that Wordpress isn't necessarily the best CMS for all ocassions. For those of you who don't like Wordpress, I'm interested in understanding your strongest reasons against. So, why not Wordpress?
Content Development | | Gyi0