Do I need a unique post meta description
-
Just wondering what the best practise is for unique meta desriptions on blogs.
When I post a blog on my wordpress, clicking the title takes you to an individual page with that blog on it.
I understand how important the title tag is on this page but when I create a meta description:
a) is it useful?
b) Should it be unique or is it ok to copy part of the post and insert that as the meta tag?
Thanks
-
I agree that the description is very important to entice users to click -- if a keyword searched on shows in your title and again in the description it is bolded creating impact.
One thing that gets me though is all these tools that promote "unique" title tags, meta descriptions and use it as a page grader -- you get an F if you don't have a unique meta description.
So I try to make it unique. It may be .005% of an overall page score but at least your paying attention to it.
-
The meta description is not used for rankings and does not need to be unique. However, Google often uses it as the description of your site that shows up in the SERPs, so you want to make it descriptive to entice searchers to click on the link. Think of it like the copy for an AdWords ad.
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
-
Do I need Yoast SEO video for YouTube videos?
I have been following advice for improving the SEO of my YouTube videos, for instance by having the keyword early in the title and description. Do I then need a plugin like Yoast Video SEO for my website where the videos are embedded to increase the chance of showing the videos for that keyword?
On-Page Optimization | | AudunBK0 -
Products and Services - Reselling - What about the description?
Hi, Let say there is a company which resell products and services of other companies. What do you think should be the strategy for putting the description of every service/product? 1. Should I copy the text from the original website and paste it on my page. In this case we get a website that has a lot of copied content, although it is a valid content. I notice that this is quite popular practice with local distributors who sell products of other (multinational) companies. If so, should I rel=canonical to the original product? But than I wouldn't rank for this product on local market right? 2. Should I come up with original descriptions? Would that give me and advantage over the websites that have copied the description from other pages? Appreciate your answer!
On-Page Optimization | | LeszekNowakowski0 -
Will German meta data help an English USA-based site get found in Germany?
I think I already know the answer to this, but I'd love a second opinion. If you add German meta data to some web pages will it help those pages turn up in search results in Germany?I'm assuming not. It's an English, USA based site, doing well here for English searches - and I don't want to mess that up. A German site is being planned, but this client is hoping the English site could be found in the meantime. ~Caro
On-Page Optimization | | Caro-O0 -
Moz shows page has no meta description but it does
Hi We recently worked on optimising one of our product pages, we created a new meta description, new unique content and a ensured it was optimised for our keyword. Despite all of this its ranking is still significantly lower than competitors eventhough the page authority is as good as theirs. I have just noticed that Moz crawl diagnostics is showing it up as having no meta description - but it does! when you check the source you see:http-equiv="description" content="Buy the robust and reliable Canon imageRUNNER 2525 from Copyfaxes. Learn more about the Canon 2525 before you buy." /> The page is: http://copyfaxes.com/product/2552/Canon-ImageRunner-2525-Digital-Copier I would appreciate any ideas.
On-Page Optimization | | copyfaxes10 -
Description tag not showing in the SERPs because page is blocked by Robots, but the page isn't blocked. Any help?
While checking some SERP results for a few pages of a site this morning I noticed that some pages were returning this message instead of a description tag, A description for this result is not avaliable because of this site's robot.s.txt The odd thing is the page isn't blocked in the Robots.txt. The page is using Yoast SEO Plugin to populate meta data though. Anyone else had this happen and have a fix?
On-Page Optimization | | mac22330 -
Should I index news and blog posts which receive little traffic
Hi all, I have a very large site at the moment with a handful of high authority pages with great content which describe the charity's work. But the main content on the site is blogs and news article which, while being good quality content from a reader's point of view, receive little traffic from search engines as they are so niche and long-tail. They do, however, get ok internal traffic from other pages. Should these pages be indexed still or should I remove them? Is there a rule of thumb regarding minimum clicks/bounce rates that an indexed page should have? What do big news agencies do with really niche articles that may get next to no traffic but have valuable content on for those that do click through? Thanks in advance! Den
On-Page Optimization | | Deniz0 -
What to do when writing unique product descriptions is impractical?
Hi Guys, Obviously in an ideal world all product descriptions would be high quality and unique. But do you ever have a client who you know they'll be totally impractical for? For example, one of my clients is a niche book store with 10,000s of products. There are only two members of staff. They currently C+P the blurb. I would love to recommend that they write unique copy for all their books, but considering the books have a low retail value and a fairly short shelf life, I doubt that unique descriptions would be worth the ROI. My initial thoughts are: Identify the high priority books/best sellers and write new product descriptions for them Encourage more customers to leave on-page product reviews Can anyone recommend any better solutions?
On-Page Optimization | | gcdtechnologies0 -
Page titles and descriptions
A website has several wigets to show Each wiget with its own page The wigets mostly just vary in size How would you suggest titles be done? Example: Wiget 1ft Wiget 2ft Wiget 3 ft an so on........ Would this trigger a duplicate content issue given “Wiget” leads in the page title?
On-Page Optimization | | APICDA0