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.
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?
-
Hi Patrick,
Thank you for your response!
On our local websites, we have specific meta-descriptions in place. Do you know another technical solution to do this on a corporate .com domain (meta-description per country)? This domain is used in the whole world but we want to test multiple meta-descriptions for this .com domain.
-
Hi there
For my vote, you should do this, especially if you're dealing with local markets, products specific to those regions, or deals/sales in those area. This is something you should test, see how they perform, and benchmark.
I would also look into the following:
International SEO (Moz)
The International SEO Checklist (Moz)Both of the resources above will help you make sure you are targeting properly based on each site variation.
But, again, for my vote, yes, you should have local specific meta descriptions if possible, where necessary.
Hope this helps - good luck!
-
Thank you for taking the time to write me this extensive response. This already helps!
-
Sorry i should have been more clear. This php solution is not a solution, at least in any practical sense.
Basically you would have for example
Descriptions Stored in variables
Meta Description UK
Meta Description USAThe page HTML would be
but the user is already on the website... they have already passed any point the meta-description would have been displayed to them.
The problem with this is that Google displays the meta-description that it has indexed from is most recent crawl. When google crawls your page is loads your page as if it were a user from wherever the bot is located, so wouldn't be able to see the other meta-descriptions for other counties and so couldn't display them if it wanted to.
Even if it crawled your site for various places around the globe, it would just be constantly tyring to update. It can change but each time it does is takes a period of time to be reflected on google. Once its changed the old one isn't stored, its just replaced. Its kinda a 1 description per page rule.
The only solution i could think off is a different landing page for each country (which you have) but there isn't a way to have a dynamic meta description on your main .com (as far as i know) sorry
-
Thank you for your answer - very valuable. We would want one fixed meta-descriptions per country. Wouldn't that change in the Google results after a certain period of time (in the right country) if we do this with a php solution. Any articles or guides you know about?
-
To my knowledge there isn't
Are there are ways with php to dynamically load in a different meta descriptions? Sure.
The problem is that this wouldn't be reflected in google. Google takes days-> weeks or even months to update a meta-description within its index. So even though you could make the HTML code change on the actual page, it wouldn't change on the search listing nullifying the whole point.
I don't believe an option exists around this, but somebody may know something i dont.
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 -
Rich Snippets appear differently for Wikipedia, Why?
Hi All, I've been doing a bit of research for a customer and whilst I was looking through the google results pages I came across this interesting rich snippet for a Wikipedia page (see screen shot attached). Its returned some extra information i.e Owner, Water Source, Number of Stills and Capacity. Is this just Google playing around or is this something I've missed and you can markup additional information for your rich snippet? Thanks in advance Jon 4TmGvJh.png
On-Page Optimization | | Jon-S0 -
Why do I have 2 different URL's for the same page - is this good practice?
Hi GuysMy father is currently using a programmer to build his new site. Knowing a little about SEO etc, I was a little suspicious of the work carried out. **Anyone with good programming and SEO knowledge, please offer your advice!**This page http://www.thewoodgalleries.co.uk/gallery-range-wood-flooring/ which is soon to be http://www.thewoodgalleries.co.uk/engineered-wood/ you'll see has a number of different products. The products on this particular page have been built into colour categories like thishttp://www.thewoodgalleries.co.uk/engineered-wood/lights-greys http://www.thewoodgalleries.co.uk/engineered-wood/beiges http://www.thewoodgalleries.co.uk/engineered-wood/browns http://www.thewoodgalleries.co.uk/engineered-wood/darks-blacks This is fine. Eventually when we add to our selection of woods, we'll easily segment each product into "colour categories" for users to easily navigate to. My question is - Why do I have 2 different URL's for the same page - is this good practice? Please see below... Visible URL - http://www.thewoodgalleries.co.uk/engineered-wood/browns/cipressa/Below is the permalink seen in Word Press for this page also.Permalink: http://www.thewoodgalleries.co.uk/engineered-wood/browns-engineered-wood/cipressa/and in the Word Press snippet shows the same permalink urlCipressa | Engineered Brown Wood | The Wood Gallerieswww.thewoodgalleries.co.uk/engineered-wood/browns-engineered-wood/cipressa/ Buy Cipressa Engineered Brown Wood, available at The Wood Galleries, London. Provides an Exceptional Foundation for Elegant Décor, Extravagant .. If this is completely ok and has no negative search impact - then I'm happy. If not what should I advise to my programmer to do? Your help would be very much appreciated. Regards Faye
On-Page Optimization | | Faye2340 -
Meta descriptions for subpages in the SERPs
Hey Mozzers! Something occurred to me the other day was that, while we can write title tags and meta descriptions to be within the character count and therefore appear nice and neatly in the SERPs, when Google et al decide to pull subpages out as further site links, it seems to still pull the normal meta description but with a far lower character count. As this looks untidy and could potentially impact CTR, is there a way I can amend the preferred text for the shortened version, via Webmaster Tools, for example? Thanks in advance for your help! Nick.
On-Page Optimization | | themegroup0 -
Should I redirect mobile traffic to a different url? Will it hurt SEO?
I'm working on a site that has lots of great content and ranks well but essentially the money is generated by affiliate links. I don't have a mobile version of the site but the company I'm affiliated with does offer a mobile redirect to their domain. Will redirecting mobile traffic to a different url hurt my SEO? I think the user will get a better experience by landing on a mobile page but I don't know if google will see it like that. Any thoughts?
On-Page Optimization | | SamCUK0 -
The page is missing meta language information.
Hi, I saw my website have a problem about meta language, I do some search and found that I need to add on the , with 'll' is language code and 'cc' is country code. But I am confused what should I do, because my website is world wide, not launch at specific any language and country. Please give me an advice in this case. Thanks,
On-Page Optimization | | JohnHuynh0 -
Is it ok to use encoded special characters in meta titles?
I've read blog posts stating that encoding special characters in title tags is both ok and not ok. Any definitive answer out there? Do the extra characters from adding encoding count towards the total number of characters that Google displays in SERPs? Or do they just count as one character?
On-Page Optimization | | BostonWright0 -
Meta descriptions
Whats the deal with the date at the start of the meta descriptions? I have not really looked into this but I'm guessing its a blog thing? Take this search http://www.google.co.uk/search?aq=f&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8&q=6packproject#hl=en&xhr=t&q=interview+with+paul+knight&cp=26&pf=p&sclient=psy&aq=f&aqi=&aql=&oq=interview+with+paul+knight&pbx=1&fp=835cd241c8d51fff The beautifully crafted meta description is now being cut short even though its within the character limit and is now only showing 36 characters! Is there a way to remove this? Thanks in advance
On-Page Optimization | | CraigAddyman0