Meta description and its influence on the SERPS
-
Hi Hi,
on the On-Page Ranking Card I read:
"The meta description, while it does not influence rankings in the results, can still be valuable to employ to improve the click-through-rate of searchers from the results page and to provide context to those visitors about the page's topic/focus."
And Google confirms that it doesn't influence the results.
On the infografic on this page (text is in german), the say, it has a little relevance for the serps and that is what I experience, too. http://t3n.de/news/diese-faktoren-beeinflussen-365580/
What is you experience with meta description and serps?
André
-
Hi André,
While Meta Descriptions really don't effect the Search Engine Rankings it can give a quality signal for your page, just as you quoted, by the click-through-rate.
If you think about it, it makes sense, if you get a high number of impressions in SERPs but you have a low CTR, what could cause it?
- Do you have an engaging Title?
- Do you have an engaging Description?
If you were a Search Engine and you see someone in the top 10 results for a highly searched query, but with a low CTR, would you let them stay there? (Underlining the fact that your motto contains: "make the web a better place").
If it was me, who can take that decision... I wouldn't let them stay there.
Both your Meta Title and Meta Description should describe the real intent of the specific page, of what you are trying to deliver there.
Write your meta title and meta description for your potential visitors and your CTR will grow.
I hope that helped,
Istvan
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 to get gold star reviews on SERP's
Hello I have always wanted to know: How to get gold star reviews on Google in search results! Please look at the screenshot to see what I am talking about. Please can someone share with me the knowledge required to make this happen - it would be perfect for my e-commerce website! GLkOK
Algorithm Updates | | xdunningx1 -
URL in SERP: Google's stand
Months back, we can notice "keyword" will be bold and highlighted if its in the SERP URL. Now Google no more highlights any URLs even with exact match of keyword we search. Beside UI, Does this mean Google might devalued or reduced the importance of URL as ranking factor? We can see many search results match partially or completely in URL with search keywords.
Algorithm Updates | | vtmoz0 -
Need to be reindexed quickly - SERP is showing a 404
So there was a mistake made where a 404 error was placed in the canonical URL for the pages my company made. We need to have these pages quickly reindexed. I asked GWT to fetch them and have an updated sitemap but the SERPs are still the same. Any tricks anyone knows that would allow me to get reindexed faster?
Algorithm Updates | | mattdinbrooklyn0 -
Did Google update the length of characters allowed in Meta Description?
Hey all, I do SEO. I'm currently working with another SEO firm on a project. The lady mentioned to me that Google recently updated (couple months ago) and changed their font causing them to lower the meta description to 55 characters. Is this true? I have not heard of this. Could she be confusing the meta description with the title tag? I didn't know Google could have even update the Title tag too.
Algorithm Updates | | ColeLusby0 -
Bing Vs Google SERP
I realize the major search engines use different criteria but I don't see how - for the same home page keyword - my site could rank #3 on page 1 for a Bing search and be off the charts (Page 15+)? on Google. Has Google gone so far off the charts with their new Penguins and Pandas so as to be in a different universe? Seems Google is now extremely over-weighting big sites like Wikipedia, WebMD, eHow, etc. and in doing so vastly reducing the diversity of results shown. I am commonly seeing different pages of the same website appear multiple times in the first 2-3 pages of Google results. What's the point?
Algorithm Updates | | veezer0 -
Search history Effects on SERPS
With search engines using adaptive search in their algo, what's the best way to reset? Currently I go to my browser which primarily is Safari second Firefox third Chrome, I empty the cache, clear history and remove all cookies and data. I also disable customerzation based on search history. Is this the best way of starting from scratch so my search results won't incorporate adaptive search tech? I also make sure I'm not signed into my gmail account since that can impact SERPS as well. What else should I be doing to make sure my search is not customized?
Algorithm Updates | | bronxpad1 -
How much CTR influence auto suggest
I make SEO in a major website (over 1M visitors/month). Our brand name is the most important term searched in Google, except this fact: our brand is written in plurial, but not the search term, so without "s". Some weeks ago, the autosuggest in Google SERPs began to show our exact brand with the famous " s ". YEAH! that's increase our visitors over 10%. But 2 weeks after, all this collapse....our brand does't appear anymore in auto suggest for same term... nada!... Even if we still ranking #1 and still have our 6 mega sitelinks... and the homepage PR increase by 1 during the same period. What Happens??? My theory point to autosuggest itself. Autosuggest to exact brand name show in Webmaster tools an increase over 180% on this term, but the historical most searched term (without this "s" decrease by 20%. Is it possible that Google looked a this as a lowest interest for us? If yes, this is bad! Any other idea? Thanks!
Algorithm Updates | | Olivier_Lambert0 -
HTML Not Validating META Title??!!
This seems pretty odd to me. HTML 5 is not validating lots of the typical META content - including, amongst others, the META title. This is typically seen as a standard 'must-have' for many SEOs, including the check-list on SEOmoz. Has anybody else had this issue? And of course, did you find a solution? Thanks, Mark
Algorithm Updates | | RiceMedia0