Should you give all the posts in a Forum an unique description? Or let it empty so Google can make one with the crawled keywords .... ...
-
To make all descriptions for all forum posts unique is a hell of a job....
One option is to crawl the first 165 characters and turn these automaticly into the meta description of the page.
If Google thinks the meta description is not suitable for the search query, Google will make a own description.In this case all te meta descriptions are unique, like the Google Guidlines want you to do.
How will Google think off the fact when we delete the meta description tag so Google will make all the descriptions by herself?
-
Hi Matt,
Thanks for your complete view on this topic.
You're right, it is not a crawling thing but dus adding a PHP line into the template
Cheers,
Wesley Kelder
-
Thanks for your confirmation!
-
If you are going to create a description then as Todd says, use the first 150-160 characters (note characters - not words). However, you shouldn't need to crawl the site to do that, they should be generated automatically as part of your page template.
I presume your forum generates pages from content in a database. If that is the case (it almost always is) then you just need to adjust the template and the descriptions will automatically appear when the page is output. A simple job for whoever looks after development for you. If you use a common forum platform there is almost certainly as "seo" plugin that handles this for you.
For forum category pages you can probably write these manually. This is where they are probably more likely to do good as well. Personally I would focus on those and not worry too much about adding a meta-description to the thread pages. If you don't mind tools like GWMT and MOZ flagging up the fact that they are missing, their absence is going to have very little impact compared with taking a snippet from the body text.
I know that some people will scream in shock at the thought of not having a meta-desc. I do though notice that even Moz.com don't bother on thread pages (like this one)
-
I would recommend doing just what you suggested - utilize the first 152.
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
-
Google Mobile site crawl returns poorer results on 100% responsive site
Has anyone experienced an issue where Google Mobile site crawl returns poorer results than their Desktop site crawl on a 100% responsive website that passes all Google Mobile tests?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | MFCommunications0 -
Disavow links of my own in niche forums that i post to regularly?
Hi Yall, I'm disavowing a new set of links and have come across a wall: Let's say your niche is in web hosting and you post to forums such as a webhostingtalk.com (a forum very popular in the hosting business). If your sole purpose is mostly selling your business and you have links (not anchor text keywords) that you direct users to for specific products and such...do you do a disavow those links? I'm not leaving links like: Web hosting, or, Free Hosting... I'm posting deals and answering some questions on other posts that direct to my site with traditional links. Thank you
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Shawn1240 -
What can you do when Google can't decide which of two pages is the better search result
On one of our primary keywords Google is swapping out (about every other week) returning our home page, which is more transactional, with a deeper more information based page. So if you look at the Analysis in Moz you get an almost double helix like graph of those pages repeatedly swapping places. So there seems to be a bit of cannibalizing happening that I don't know how to correct. I think part of the problem is the deeper page would ideally be "longer" tail searches that contain the one word keyword that is having this bouncing problem as a part of the longer phrase. What can be done to try prevent this from happening? Can internal links help? I tried adding a link on that term to the deeper page to our homepage, and in a knee jerk reaction was asked to pull that link before I think there was really any evidence to suggest that that one new link made a positive or negative effect. There are some crazy theories floating around at the moment, but I am curious what others think both about if adding a link from a informational to a transactional page could in fact have a negative effect, and what else could be done/tried to help clarify the difference between the two pages for the search engines.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | plumvoice0 -
New website won't rank for branded keywords in Google, but does in Bing
We launched a website in October www.butterfly.com. The branded product name "Butterfly Body Liners" will not rank until page 2 of Google, but it ranks #1 in Bing. Organic traffic never really picked up so it's not easy to tell if it's been "hit" by any penalty. The strange thing is, this website: http://archive.is/PQZdO is ranking #1. This is an archived version of the site. Does anyone have any insight as to why this is happening?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | LaughlinConstable0 -
Does Google make continued attempts to crawl an old page one it has followed a 301 to the new page?
I am curious about this for a couple of reasons. We have all dealt with a site who switched platforms and didn't plan properly and now have 1,000's of crawl errors. Many of the developers I have talked to have stated very clearly that the HTacccess file should not be used for 1,000's of singe redirects. I figured If I only needed them in their temporarily it wouldn't be an issue. I am curious if once Google follows a 301 from an old page to a new page, will they stop crawling the old page?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | RossFruin0 -
How Does Google Treat Date Ranges For a Specific Keyword or Query?
How are date ranges interpreted by Google - ie if you type "1993-2003" does Google know 1995 is incl. and should be referenced for a query? What is the best practice for an ecomm site when it comes to a landing page for multiple years? Should be list out each year (looks spammy, "2003,2004,2005...), go with a full range (1993-2003 ), or is a two digit range suffice (88-95)?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | andrewv0 -
Optimize short tail keyword by optimizing long tail keyword
Many SEO's said that if i have a keyword suppose 'coat stand' that is very competitive and second keyword is 'cheap coat stand' that is less competitive .If we promote long tail keyword (cheap coat stand) than ranking of 'coat stand' will improve.Is it true?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Alick3000 -
Google +one button - help needed
Can someone from this wonderful community answer the question. The link is http://www.seomoz.org/q/google-one-button-help-needed-2
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | seoug_20050