Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
Can I use the first sentence of my page content as a meta description tag as well?
-
I just want to copy my content on the page and use the first or as well the second sentence of the content self for my meta description tag. Is that OK? Or should the Meta description tag be different?
-
Ruslan, Thank you so much for your answer. Do you know by the chance the name of the plug in I can install for Wordpress (that's how my site is build in).
-
Hi Paulina.
I agree with Ruslan in terms of whether it is OK from a ranking perspective.
However, it is critical to remember that your meta data has another important objective - to entice searchers to click through to your page.
A well written meta description makes a considerable difference to click-through rates.
Consider spending as long on your page meta data as you would when trying to write an effective Adwords Ad.
In consideration of this objective (maximising click through rates), you may find that the first sentence or two of your body copy would not suffice as an effective meta description.
cheers, David.
-
I think nobody will blame me if I tell you YES, because until now it is not proven fact that the appearance of your keywords in meta description will make an impact on your rankings. However I will recommend two things:
-
If you use any type of CMS (Joomla or Werdpress) to build your website then you can download the plugin which generates the meta description automaticaly.
-
Still it's better if you will include the targeted keywords from page to meta description, and even if you check SeoMoz on-page optimization, those guys are recommend to do this.
-
Remember that attractive and interesting Meta Description might highlight you among your competitors and bring you additional traffic even if you are not TOP1.
Hope that it was clear.
-
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 unique should a meta description be?
I'm working on a large website (circa 25k pages) that presently just replicates each page title as a meta description. I'm thinking of doing a 'find and replace' in the database so I change: to where the preceeding and following text would be the same in each case eg Is this unique enough? Obviously the individual keyword would make it technically unique each time....and manually changing them would take the rest of my life 🙂
On-Page Optimization | | abisti21 -
Different meta-description per country?
I have this .com domain which is the corporate website. Next to this domain, we also have local domains. We would like to test with a different meta-description per country on this one corporate .com domain. Does anyone knows if this is possible and how we could integrate this?
On-Page Optimization | | WeAreDigital_BE0 -
Duplicate Content with ?Page ID's in WordPress
Hi there, I'm trying to figure out the best way to solve a duplicate content problem that I have due to Page ID's that WordPress automatically assigns to pages. I know that in order for me to resolve this I have to use canonical urls but the problem for me is I can't figure out the URL structure. Moz is showing me thousands of duplicate content errors that are mostly related to Page IDs For example, this is how a page's url should look like on my site Moz is telling me there are 50 duplicate content errors for this page. The page ID for this page is 82 so the duplicate content errors appear as follows and so on. For 47 more pages. The problem repeats itself with other pages as well. My permalinks are set to "Post Name" so I know that's not an issue. What can I do to resolve this? How can I use canonical URLs to solve this problem. Any help will be greatly appreciated.
On-Page Optimization | | SpaMedica0 -
Tags vs. Categories? What should I use?
I'm starting with a blog (self-hosted wordpress) and I'm thinking of the following content structure so that the readers are easily able to locate relevant content: Background: It's a blog which gives people relevant info about government jobs. To start with we will just be publishing information about these jobs but over a period of time also intend to post content that helps readers prepare for these jobs. In other words, right now it's just about detailed job notifications but in the coming months, we shall also post about preparation-related information. Typically, each of the job notifications can be bifurcated like: Jobs basis industry Banking Railways Clinical, etc. Jobs basis company ABC co. DEF co. XYZ co. etc. Jobs basis State / City City 1 City 2, etc. Jobs basis educational qualification Graduation Post-Graduation, etc. Now, I'm seriously confused how should I structure this data from the perspective of Categories & Tags such that it's reader as well as SEO-friendly. Do note that each of the government jobs post ideally falls in a couple of above mentioned categories. Thanks..
On-Page Optimization | | Shalin.TJ0 -
URL Domain Used in Meta Description
Today I was asked if using a domain url in your meta description can have a negative impact on your website. This description includes a list of the homepage url, but directs visitors to a different internal page of the website. My concern fell with directing visitors to a different page of the site, but promoting the homepage in the description/snippet. With Penguin 2.1 release on the 4th, I'm very cautious of my links/urls. What are your thoughts behind this? What are the possible, if any negative impacts this could have on a site? This URL does have a brand name as so the Title.
On-Page Optimization | | flcity150 -
Solve duplicate content issues by using robots.txt
Hi, I have a primary website and beside that I also have some secondary websites with have same contents with primary website. This lead to duplicate content errors. Because of having many URL duplicate contents, so I want to use the robots.txt file to prevent google index the secondary websites to fix the duplicate content issue. Is it ok? Thank for any help!
On-Page Optimization | | JohnHuynh0 -
SEO Location Pages - ALT Image Tag Question
Hello Guru's, I have a Hire Website whereby you can rent products online. I have created different Location pages for these which are in essence the same pages page but with different location specific urls, title tags , on page content etc etc. This helps me to rank for local search. These location pages also display 20 products per page. My question is Should I make the ALT IMAGE TEXT location specific for each of the 20 products . Example - Steam Cleaner Rental in "location" or should I only amend a few of the Atl Image Texts to be location specific. I don't want to come accross as spammy in google eyes but I also don't want to be seen as having duplicate content , images etc etc What do you think ? thanks Sarah.
On-Page Optimization | | SarahCollins0 -
Best practice for Meta-Robots tag in categories and author pages?
For some of our site we use Wordpress, which we really like working with. The question I have is for the categories and authors pages (and similiar pages), i.e. the one looking: http://www.domain.com/authors/. Should you or should you not use follow, noindex for meta-robots? We have a lot of categories/tags/authors which generates a lot of pages. I'm a bit worried that google won't like this and leaning towards adding the follow, noindex. But the more I read about it, the more I see people disagree. What does the community of Seomoz think?
On-Page Optimization | | Lobtec0
