Utf-8 symbols in the Title or Meta Description?
-
Has somebody any experience (pros or cons) to using utf-8 symbols in the Title or in the Meta Description tags?
Expedia uses it:
http://prntscr.com/74ofrv -
Google is officially supporting some emoticons. I talked to one big-brand SEO last week who has tested it with a fair degree of success. A couple of warnings:
(1) Testing the impact on one title tag is a fair amount of work, so it really has to be a high-impact SERP. This isn't something you want to spend days on across thousands of results.
(2) Make sure the character/symbol really is relevant. People focus on the first two words of a headline, and that emoticon may well take the place of one of those words, so make it count. I wouldn't do this just because you can.
(3) Not all characters render properly on all OSs and devices. Make sure to test.
-
Thanks for your Answer Ikkie, but my question was especially about using "utf-8 symbols in the Title/Meta tags".
Should I use, or not? -
that there are no real pros or cons in where you place the
TITLE
element within the HTML document’s HEAD area. However, although this is nothing whatsoever to do with SEO, I do remember reading that in an HTML document, the best practise is to include theTITLE
after the firstMETA
tag that declares the content-type and/or charset value(s), e.g.:<code><title>[Placeholder Title]</title> […]</code>
(I am fairly certain that this technique is stated somewhere in the W3C Recommendation, HTML 4.01 Specification, in the section "The global structure of an HTML document" ( …but if I would double-check this.) Although I think the technical reason was to ensure titles that contain HTML entities that need to be escaped should always declare a character set before you provide the actual text, it still makes you think: is source-ordering important?
At the very least, it is conventional wisdom to always place the content you want to gain the most exposure in terms of SEO/the search-engines' results pages (SERPS) higher up in the web pages (X)HTML source code (e.g. in a website without any
META
description tags set, the first paragraph in the document will probably be the one chosen to represent that webpage’s description in its SERP listing, not the second or third etc., etc.) Ultimately, I would say that you certainly have nothing to lose in placing thisTITLE
(or any content) higher.You can also see the guidelines for this on the MOZ blog link here
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
-
What is your experience so far, with the new Google's Meta Description length up to 320 characters?
I updated a few home pages and some landing pages, so far so good! Although, I wish to know about other experiences, before continue updating. Thanks for your comments!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Mª Verónica B.2 -
All of my blog titles have disappeared. In need of Wordpress help.
Not sure if this is the right place to ask this question but here it goes. All of the titles on my real estate website have disappeared. I have spent hours looking through different forums trying to figure out how to make them show up. Also whenever I hover the cursor over links they turn to white and disappear as well. This is the website: http://www.acolerealty.com/blog/ If this helps here is the custom CSS in worpress is the following: /* GREEN */ body {background: #eff3ec !important;} .header-membership {
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | artscube.biz
background: #fff !important;
box-shadow: none !important;
border-bottom: 2px solid #e5e9e3 !important;
} .header-membership a {
color: #909090 !important;
text-shadow: none !important
} h1#site-title a {
color: #397249 !important;
} header nav#main-nav {
background: #7aad79 !important; /* Old browsers /
background: -moz-linear-gradient(top, #7aad79 0%, #397249 100%) !important; / FF3.6+ /
background: -webkit-gradient(linear, left top, left bottom, color-stop(0%,#7aad79), color-stop(100%,#397249)) !important; / Chrome,Safari4+ /
background: -webkit-linear-gradient(top, #7aad79 0%,#397249 100%); / Chrome10+,Safari5.1+ /
background: -o-linear-gradient(top, #7aad79 0%,#397249 100%) !important; / Opera 11.10+ /
background: -ms-linear-gradient(top, #7aad79 0%,#397249 100%) !important; / IE10+ /
background: linear-gradient(to bottom, #7aad79 0%,#397249 100%) !important; / W3C /
filter: progid:DXImageTransform.Microsoft.gradient( startColorstr='#7aad79', endColorstr='#397249',GradientType=0 ) !important; / IE6-9 */
} #t-header-container .home-search-container #header-top-search::before {
background: #7aad79 !important; /* Old browsers /
background: -moz-linear-gradient(top, #7aad79 0%, #397249 100%) !important; / FF3.6+ /
background: -webkit-gradient(linear, left top, left bottom, color-stop(0%,#7aad79), color-stop(100%,#397249)) !important; / Chrome,Safari4+ /
background: -webkit-linear-gradient(top, #7aad79 0%,#397249 100%); / Chrome10+,Safari5.1+ /
background: -o-linear-gradient(top, #7aad79 0%,#397249 100%) !important; / Opera 11.10+ /
background: -ms-linear-gradient(top, #7aad79 0%,#397249 100%) !important; / IE10+ /
background: linear-gradient(to bottom, #7aad79 0%,#397249 100%) !important; / W3C /
filter: progid:DXImageTransform.Microsoft.gradient( startColorstr='#7aad79', endColorstr='#397249',GradientType=0 ) !important; / IE6-9 */
} input.button-primary {
background: #7aad79 !important; /* Old browsers /
background: -moz-linear-gradient(top, #7aad79 0%, #397249 100%) !important; / FF3.6+ /
background: -webkit-gradient(linear, left top, left bottom, color-stop(0%,#7aad79), color-stop(100%,#397249)) !important; / Chrome,Safari4+ /
background: -webkit-linear-gradient(top, #7aad79 0%,#397249 100%); / Chrome10+,Safari5.1+ /
background: -o-linear-gradient(top, #7aad79 0%,#397249 100%) !important; / Opera 11.10+ /
background: -ms-linear-gradient(top, #7aad79 0%,#397249 100%) !important; / IE10+ /
background: linear-gradient(to bottom, #7aad79 0%,#397249 100%) !important; / W3C /
filter: progid:DXImageTransform.Microsoft.gradient( startColorstr='#7aad79', endColorstr='#397249',GradientType=0 ) !important; / IE6-9 */ border:1px solid #23472d !important;
} input.button-primary:hover {
background: #628b61 !important;
} footer {
background: #e4e8e1 !important;
}0 -
Some Tools Not Recognizing Meta Tags
I am analyzing a site which has several thousands of pages, checking the headers, meta tags, and other on page factors. I noticed that the spider tool on SEO Book (http://tools.seobook.com/general/spider-test) does not seem to recognize the meta tags for various pages. However, using other tools including Moz, it seems the meta tags are being recognized. I wouldn't be as concerned with why a tool is not picking up the tags. But, the site suffered a large traffic loss and we're still trying to figure out what remaining issues need to be addressed. Also, many of those pages once ranked in Google and now cannot be found unless you do a site:// search. Is it possible that there is something blocking where various tools or crawlers can easily read them, but other tools cannot. This would seem very strange to me, but the above is what I've witnessed recently. Your suggestions and feedback are appreciated, especially as this site continues to battle Panda.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ABK7170 -
Have Title Tags Changed After Hummingbird?
Now that Hummingbird is really looking at longer-tail searches and almost a Q&A style search, should the way we do our title tags change? Moz still recommends: Optimal Format Primary Keyword - Secondary Keyword | Brand Name
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | netviper
or
Brand Name | Primary Keyword and Secondary Keyword But is this really right anymore after Hummingbird? Should we be more of a Q&A type title tag, while still using our Primary Keyword? For example: If I am targeting Red Nike Shoes, should my title tag be: Red Nike Shoes, Nike Shoes | Shoes.com or now: We carry the latest Red Nike Shoes | Shoes.com or Find Red Nike Shoes on sale at shoes.com What are your thoughts?0 -
Google and Product Description Tabs
How does Google process a product page with description tabs? For example, lets say the product page has a tab for Overview, Specifications, What's In the Box and so on. Wouldn't that content be better served in one main product description tab with the tab names used as (htags) or highlighted paragraph separators? Or, does all that content get crawled as a single page regardless of the tabs?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | AWCthreads0 -
Meta NOINDEX and links into the pages?
If I have internal links pointing to pages that are META NO INDEX, will Google still index them? Or does that only apply to pages that are linked to from an external domain? Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | bjs20100 -
Ever had a case where publication of products & descriptions in ebay or amazon caused Panda penalty?
One of our shops got a Panda penalty back in september. We sell all our items with same product name and same product description also on amazon.com , amazon.co.uk, ebay.com and ebay.co.uk. Did you ever have a case where such multichannel sales caused panda penalty?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | lcourse0 -
Which search engines still use Meta Keywords?
I know Google doesn't use meta keywords in meta tags, but i was wondering if there are other smaller search engines that still do? Id it worth it to add meta keywords for them?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | jhinchcliffe0