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 do I use meta descriptions properly?
Hi there, I am starting to write a blog and I wanted to know, how to write meta descriptions correctly? I have been reading a lot about this subject lately and I found very different opinions in terms of length. Could you give me some advise about this? Thank you!!
Content Development | | lucywrites1 -
Using different sections from all over your site to compile a blog post, bad idea or ok to do?
I have a large site that sells various products, I have been on a kick creating new content relating to the many aspects of upkeep with these products after purchase, I wanted to create a blog post combining all the info for the group of products, but will be reusing some of the FAQs and even tips, since I'm more or less relocating the info. Since this blog post is using many different sources on our site, using a rel=canonical isn't possible. Is there anything I should watch out for, Will rewording / phrasing here and there be enough or should I steer clear of this as a whole?
Content Development | | Deacyde0 -
Should we be using a blog for news
Our domain has/had a blog on a seperate subdomain. However we were a little slack in always keeping this up to date when we are particularly busy. Rather than reinstating the blog, I have been adding all our new articles directly onto the website rather than as blog posts. Is there any advantage from an SEO perspective to posting articles to a blog rather than as content on a site?
Content Development | | dsmdesign0 -
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 -
What plugins & tactics are you using for Wordpress meta SEO?
Currently I use All-In-One SEO and I quite like how simple it is to setup and it's stable. Is that still one of the best ones? What are you using these days? Is it worth stripping out the superfluous meta tags that Wordpress now puts in? Is there any value to adding meta descriptions to all my Tag pages and if so, is there a good plugin that will auto magically create unique descriptions for these pages? Same goes for my paginated archives. Thanks!
Content Development | | flowsimple0 -
Separating words in URLS using hyphens vs. "no separator"
Does it matter if I use hyphens in URL versus. "no separation". Ex www.mysite.com/someproducts or
Content Development | | clolsen
www.mysite.com/SomeProducts vs.
www.mysite.com/some-products The last is perhaps more readable by humans, but does it make any SEO difference using one or the other?1 -
How can I use my unique content to my advantage?
Hi, I run http://ablemagazine.co.uk - we also put out a print magazine every 2 months (the biggest disability magazine in Britain) This means we have loads of unique content (around 30 feature stories and 30 news stories every 2 months) Just wondering how I can use this to my advantage? I've been social bookmarking the feature stories (reddit, etc) and a link to all my unique stuff on facebook/twitter. Just wondering if there's anything else I should be doing? Thanks
Content Development | | craven220