What to do about new meta description character limit?
-
Hey Everyone,
So as I'm sure everyone has heard the new meta description limits have been increased and I have been going back and forth with whether or not to update my descriptions for my client's websites. I know that Google is now dynamically generating descriptions based off of content, but is it still beneficial to write longer descriptions as well? Will Google display my longer description now if it is ranking well? Rand Fishkin at Moz and others say that you should and other people, including Danny Sullivan, have said you shouldn't worry about it and leave them at between 150-160. My questions is what should I do? I will be focusing heavily on making sure the site's content is very targeted and relevant for when Google dynamically generates the descriptions, but should I still edit my descriptions manually?
-
Pete at Moz updated his "How Long Should Your Meta Descriptions Be?" post last night:
He says this:
"At the end of the day, I think it comes down to control. For critical pages, writing a good meta description is like writing ad copy — there's real value in crafting that copy to drive interest and clicks. There's no guarantee Google will use that copy, and that fact can be frustrating, but the odds are still in your favor..."Like he says, I think it ultimately comes down to what makes the most sense for that page. For some pages on our website, a very short description seems to suffice. These can be as short as 50 characters. For some of our more "weightier" pages, like our services pages, we try our best to entice the user to click with a true description of what they will find on the page, as well as the action they might be expected to take. These may be around 300 characters. We're pretty confident (Dr. Pete is too) that this is a safe number that won't get cut off, regardless any features or "Jump To" links Google may add to the result.
Cheers!
-
- Crawl entire website and see which descriptions have been updated to the new limit
- Sort pages in order from most important ones to leas important
- Rewrite descriptions that look like this: https://i.imgur.com/UadRJT9.png
- Repeat until all descriptions are updated
-
With this change I saw that Google replaced my meta description by the first x amount of characters of my content. This new text was too random and not inviting people to click. (in my opinion) So I have changed all my meta descriptions to an average of 280 characters, and I already see some result in Google where it displays my new (full) meta description.
So far I'm happy I did...
-
To start, we are rewriting the descriptions for a few dozen pages.
**Which pages? ** Those that have really deep content that pulls in a lot of traffic for long tail keywords of value.
What's the intended result? If we get those frequently-searched keywords into the description they will show in bold text in the SERPs.
**What are the strategies ? **
A) Use those keywords in ways that show we have deeper information for those who click into the site.
B) Associate those keywords with value propositions, urgency, mystery and other triggers to action.
-
Hello everyone!
Personally I think this is too recent. As Danny Sullivan (I think was him) said, we should not go as lunatics trying to re-optimize our meta descriptions.
My advise to everyone that asks about this: Lets give Google a little time ( how about until Q2-18?), so then we will know how is the real impact.
Of course there is a direct metric about the CTR, with longer descriptions snippets the better is the chance to call the attention of the searcher. How ever, we still dont know for sure how Google creates that descriptions.That's just my point of view. I'm more of a cautious person.
Best luck to all.
GR. -
Hello, the description is like the billboard of your search listing where the title tag is the headline. This is your opportunity to tell people reading the search results why they should click on it and visit your site.
Just pretend it was a paid advertisement for a minute and every click cost you five dollars. Optimize the title and descriptions to convey your message and put your best foot forward. If you think every visit is worth a certain amount of money it is easier to see how important they really are.
Best Regards
-
When I was starting in the world of Seo I was really obsessed, with snipped optimization and keyword optimization and so on.
Now I prefer to focus on the content and the user needs.
As I see and understand Google is just trying to give to the user's more specific search results.
If someone asks a question to Google, it will try to give the best answer possible at the first time. If any page, site, fan page or whatever meets those criteria, then Google will put it in the first place. On the other hand, if that page does not meet the search query intent "answer the question" then that page will not be in the first place.
No matter the description, or the on-page optimization, or the schemas.
So I think is very simple, don't waste your time leave your meta description alone and create a good content.
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
-
New blog on a separate server to the main website?
We have a potential client who operates a jobs board in a niche sector in the UK. They want to start a blog but don't want to set it up on the same server as the main jobs site. Discussion started around Wordpress, and their preference is for the WP.com hosted version in a directory or subdomain of the TLD. Our concerns are around the different locations of the two sites (impact of two diff server locations and IP addresses?) but also the limitation of WP.com to interlink the two sites enough that they provide a decent customer experience. Thoughts, musings, advice - all welcome! Tks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | AB-Marketing0 -
301 old site to new site?
I have client with an old site - www.bestfamilylawattorney.com - which had a lot of spammy links (and bad rankings). Instead of fixing those issues, we started a new URL - www.berenjifamilylaw.com - with new content and redesign. Should I do a 301 redirect from old to new domain? If the old site was being penalized, would a 301 transfer that penalty? I just want to make sure I don't end up hurting the new site after doing all the work to start fresh. Thanks.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | mrodriguez14400 -
Meta Keywords: Do They Hurt Rankings
I know that Google doesn't use meta keywords, but does it hurt to have anything in there? Just wondering if I need to remove all the meta keywords that are on my site, or are they harmless to have. Also, would meta keywords ever be used by an internal search plug-in if we were to install one in the future, or do they generally look at the product title and description for that info?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | b4cab0 -
Do you get links from new websites?
There's a new industry specific website that looks decent. It's clean and nothing spammy. However, it's so new it's DA is under 10. Is it worth pursuing a link from a site like this? On one hand, there's nothing spammy and it is industry specific. On the other...it's just DA is so terrible (worse than any of our other links), I don't want it to hurt us. Any thoughts? Ruben
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | KempRugeLawGroup1 -
Webmaster Tools Not Indexing New Pages
Hi there Mozzers, Running into a small issue. After a homepage redesign (from a list of blog posts to a product page), it seems that blog posts are buried on the http://OrangeOctop.us/ site. The latest write-up on "how to beat real madrid in FIFA 15", http://orangeoctop.us/against-real-madrid-fifa-15/ , has yet to be indexed. It would normally take about a day naturally for pages to be indexed or instantly with a manual submission. I have gone into webmaster tools and manually submitted the page for crawls multiple times on multiple devices. Still not showing up in the search results. Can anybody advise?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | orangeoctop.us0 -
Limit on Google Removal Tool?
I'm dealing with thousands of duplicate URL's caused by the CMS... So I am using some automation to get through them - What is the daily limit? weekly? monthly? Any ideas?? thanks, Ben
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | bjs20100 -
301 from penalized domain to new domain
I have a client whose site isn't necessarily penalized since they still show for many terms in the SERPS, however at one point they did an xrummer blast of 13,000 links for two anchor texts they were trying to rank for. They have purchased a new domain and have gone white hat and want to 301 some of the old site to the new purely for the users sake so past visitors still find them at t the new location. Will creating 301 redirects pass on to the new domain any bad Karma from the old one in Google's eyes? Thanks for the help.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | JoshGill270 -
10,000 New Pages of New Content - Should I Block in Robots.txt?
I'm almost ready to launch a redesign of a client's website. The new site has over 10,000 new product pages, which contain unique product descriptions, but do feature some similar text to other products throughout the site. An example of the page similarities would be the following two products: Brown leather 2 seat sofa Brown leather 4 seat corner sofa Obviously, the products are different, but the pages feature very similar terms and phrases. I'm worried that the Panda update will mean that these pages are sand-boxed and/or penalised. Would you block the new pages? Add them gradually? What would you recommend in this situation?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | cmaddison0