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 Changing Meta Descriptions Negatively Impact SERP's?
-
I have just had a page start ranking well in key SERP's and I would like to change the meta description and add a price as we are extremely competative in that line.
Could changing the meta description now a page is ranking negatively impact the SERP placing?
Does anyone have any experience with this?
-
Hey Robert,
I was wondering what your experiences where with the changing meta descriptions?
My team was looking to do something similar with one of our sites and we are worried about changing meta descriptions and whether that would affect us negatively.
Thanks
-
Good point Lewis.
How do so what code do I use? (£
I don't have much experience with this.
-
The general line is that we should design for the user and not the search engine so if a meta description is compelling and attracts users then that would be exactly what you are doing.
If you believe that putting the price will increase the click through then I would go for it.
Had some advice from Will Critchlow when I asked about the use of the £ symbol in meta descriptions and he said that we should "use HTML encoding (£ rather than £). We tend to advise going for ASCII only as character encoding opens you up to a world of pain, but HTML entities should generally be fine"
-
I have added a price to the Meta Description.. as I believe we are selling this product @ the cheapest price in the country..
I agree it could bring forward any change in any case.
What do you think googles attitude is towards promotional Meta descriptions?
Hopefully a good meta tag that gets a click through would be taken into account ahead of a promotional meta description that mentions price.
What do you think?
-
I can see what you're getting at, but I agree with Lewis-SEO. Given that meta description is not visible on the page any changes (other than perhaps old school spammy) are just noted and displayed. If you were to change something on-page at the same time it may well get re-assessed, but that's not what we were discussing.
Even if it were to trigger a re-assessment all it would be doing is reviewing that page and putting it in it's "correct" place in the SERPs. Had you not done anything to it, it would still have dropped as soon as it was re-crawled regardless, all initiating a crawl would do is bring forward the inevitable.
Of course if we go on the theory that Google has started using user data; if the meta description changed how the page converted or how people reacted to the page (and you could check your analytics) it could effect your rankings.
Basically if users are now leaving your page in droves because of a misleading meta description that may have a knock on effect.
-
I guess what I mean is...
I know it is not supposed to influence SERP's but
Logically if a meta description changes radically I would imagine there would be some mechanisim thats is triggered for at least reviewing the SERP's placement for that page.
So the content of the meta description is irrelevant but the fact it may have changed would flag up somewhere in the Algo?
Its just a thought...
-
The meta description tag doesn't influence SERP's.
As you know search engines often use it as the description for your page in search results.As such a relevant, unique, compelling meta description can have a positive influence on how many clicks you get on your search listing.
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
-
Can Very High Impressions and 0% Organic CTR Impact our SEO Rankings?
I have a very strange feeling that someone bad is trying to hurt our company, but maybe I am wrong. Let me explain. In the last two month, we have seen a very significant drop in sales on our website, but we couldn't figure out why. We have looked at different metrics (Google Search Console, Moz, Google Analytics), but everything looked alright. We had 10% loss in traffic, but we didnt believe at the time that it could be the main issue. Just yesterday we've discovered the following (please see attached screenshot😞 On August 18, 2018 Google launched Search Update On the same date, we had a jump in Organic Search Impressions for one particular keyword, which we never tracked before: "free facebook login". Majority of all impressions (233,000 out of 258,000) were from Philippines. Very low total number of clicks (50 clicks) led to 0% Average CTR for this keyword. Which in return, also lowered our global CTR by 1%. One month later we had 1000's of spam emails sent to our Helpdesk from two IP addresses, also from Philippines. We blocked them of course. It could be all coincidence. I dont know. But do you think that someone can use this fraudulent tactic to lower our CTR and drop our ranking and traffic? Can this influence our SEO in any way? It's also possible that someone is attacking Facebook and we just happen to be there, on the first page, for the same keyword. Should we try to eliminate our page for this keyword and see what happens? I've checked this article from Rand Fishkin - https://moz.com/blog/impact-of-queries-and-clicks-on-googles-rankings-whiteboard-friday and it seems that CTR is an important factor. However the article is from 2015 and maybe it's no longer relevant. What should we do? Thanks! G86Nge4
Conversion Rate Optimization | | plumrocket11 -
Metadescription (SERP's) with green checkmarks: spammy or not?
HI Will a Metadescription with GREEN checkmarks be perceived as spammy in general? Or is one with BLACK checkmarks better? Depends on the topic/target audience, etc.? --> see screenshots. No doubt that the green will stand up more (increases CTR) in the SERPS but if it is perceived as less trustworthy or even spammy by the target audience its not worth doing it. Any experience with that? Would really like to know what do you think about it. Cheers, Cesare 0G3Fd
Conversion Rate Optimization | | Cesare.Marchetti0 -
Large changes in conversions with consistent traffic
Hi Everyone, I am looking for some help, I have just taken over a campaign for a client and we are seeing huge changes in conversion rates overnight. The client is selling a health product and is consistently getting around 1-2k visitors per day. We are getting about 6% of the traffic to the buy page consistently. However, we have found that one day the order process may convert 1/20 of these visitors and another day it could be 1/80. We are only talking about 5-20 sales per day, but I am really confused why one day it can convert so well and another so poorly. The traffic being sent is the same and all other factors are the same (no split testing). There seems to be no logic, the day of the week does not seem to impact, it almost seems random. If anybody has any recommended places to look that would be very helpful as at the moment I am at a loss. Example: Sunday 15th Visitors: 1,279
Conversion Rate Optimization | | Twist360
Order Page: 240
Sales: 3
Declines: 3 Monday 16th Visitors: 1,407
Order Page: 323
Sales: 17
Declines: 51 -
How can I find the redirect that removes special parameter from Adwords?
My main problem is Google Analytics doesn't show data from Google Adwords because a redirect in my site removes the special parameter(gclid) supplied by Adwords. Here's an email from one of Google Adwords representative: "When I reviewed your website, I found that a redirect set up on your site is removing auto-tagging information from your URLs. Auto-tagging automatically adds a parameter to the end of each of your AdWords destination URLs in order to identify visitors as AdWords referrals. The tag captures keyword, campaign, ad content information, and your ad's position when a user clicked it. The parameter used in auto-tagging is called "gclid." However, due to your website's redirect, the "gclid" parameter is being removed from the URL. As a result, Google Analytics is unable to properly track visitors reaching your site through AdWords. We suggest contacting your webmaster to append the "gclid" parameter to the redirected URL. If this isn't possible, you may want to consider removing the use of the redirect." Thanks in advance!
Conversion Rate Optimization | | esiow20130 -
How can I track the traffic source/keyword of form submissions?
I'm using Google Analytics on www.nhfinehomes.com and would like to track the source of leads submitted via form submissions. Ideally, I could track if the lead originated from organic search (and what keyword phrase), PPC, referral links, etc. Is this possible with Google Analytics and if so, can anyone point to some documentation on how to do this or better yet someone who can help me set this up? This site is running ASP.NET and uses JQuery so there is not a 'traditional' thank you page that I can reference. I'm not a programmer and do not pretend to be one! Thanks in advance. Link
Conversion Rate Optimization | | LinkMoser0 -
How can I pass the Search Term into a lead form?
We receive lead forms from interested visitors that include their name, email, grade level, and academic goals, and we would like to also know which specific phrase they used when searching for us. I need to find a way to grab the referring keywords and pass them as a hidden form field. Can this be done, and are there scripts available that can do this?
Conversion Rate Optimization | | brycebertola0 -
Capitilization in Meta Description
Hi, In a meta description I was wondering which is best for click through rate: A Meta Description Written Like This With Leading Capitals and Some Fully Capitalized Words Eg FREE, BUY NOW Etc? OR A meta description written normally like this without leading capitals and fully capitalized words? My initial thoughts is the capitalised one stands out more and may get more click throughs, but I also don't see anyone else doing it this way so I was wondering what the generally accepted thought is on which one improves the CTR more?
Conversion Rate Optimization | | GrantEllis0 -
Conversion optimization with Optimizely, impact on SEO
I am looking into signing up with www.optimizely.com for conversion testing. They put scripting on my site which will then redirect half of my site visitors to an alternate home page. The site I want to test on is ranking quite well with Google and I do not want to hurt my rankings. And with this set up,what Google will think is my home page is not and so I am essentially sending visitors to a different page than Google reads as my home page in source code. So, my concern is whether this will have a negative impact on my SEO rankings to redirect 50% of site visitors to a different page using this testing tool? I would use Google Web Site Optimizer, but many of my sites are in Wordpress and it seems that Wordpress and web site optimizer are not so compatible. Advice would be appreciated. Thank you, Robert
Conversion Rate Optimization | | Robertnweil11