Meta description recommendation

Discussion in 'Search Engine Optimization' started by jeff23, Jan 12, 2010.

  1. #1
    In my meta description I have my keywords but now I am on google first page for some keywords and thinking of replacing my meta description with something informative or attractive so people can get preview of what I can do for them and than can click on my website.\
    \\

    My concern is if I replace that keywords in metadescription with something informative than my ranking will decrease and i will go on further inner pages.

    What should I do?. Should I keep as they are now or should replace them with something attractive
     
    jeff23, Jan 12, 2010 IP
  2. Lever

    Lever Deep Thought

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    #2
    That's the gamble everyone doing SEO takes :)

    You could try replacing your description with something more relevant/descriptive and if you climb, keep it, if you drop, go back to what you had before.
     
    Lever, Jan 12, 2010 IP
  3. christoph

    christoph Active Member

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    #3
    What are your keywords and what is your current description? If you let us know I am sure we will all have a little ponder for you...
     
    christoph, Jan 12, 2010 IP
  4. atniz

    atniz Well-Known Member

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    #4
    atniz, Jan 13, 2010 IP
  5. neiljhonson

    neiljhonson Peon

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    #5
    As Matt Cutts told that description is not playing any role in website ranking at search engine but this is true or not God knows. If you would like to change the description from website landing page then it would go out of ranking.

    If you would like to take chance for this then there would be risk for this to be in ranking.
     
    neiljhonson, Jan 13, 2010 IP
  6. Grut

    Grut Peon

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    #6
    I found nice article about meta description and ranking:
    h t t p ://www.site-reference.com/articles/Search-Engines/Your-Meta-Descriptions-Now-Affect-Your-Google-Rankings-Again.html
     
    Grut, Jan 13, 2010 IP
  7. waqqasawan

    waqqasawan Greenhorn

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    #7
    Yes, we can make some suggestions after knowing the description and keywords.
     
    waqqasawan, Jan 13, 2010 IP
  8. simpseo

    simpseo Active Member

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    #8
    Use your meta description to attract click throughs to your site - forget targetting keywords. The meta description is completely ignored for ranking purposes on any search engine worth bothering about.
     
    simpseo, Jan 13, 2010 IP
  9. beyondelectricdreams

    beyondelectricdreams Peon

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    #9
    According to that article:

    "Even though we sometimes use the description meta tag for the snippets we show, we still don't use the description meta tag in our ranking."

    Most SEOs have known this for years that the meta tags are essentially useless in terms of boosting your rankings.

    That's not to say that you should avoid them alltogether. Your title tag remains extremely important to generate a higher CTR in the search results as does your description tag. The challenge is that often times Google will replace your description tag with a snippet of text on your page if they deem it to be more relevant to the user's query and unfortunately you have little to no control over that except to write a description tag that encompasses the keywords you're targeting.

    As atniz said, go ahead and change your description tags to something more relevant - it will only help you in the long run by attracting users' attentions.
     
    beyondelectricdreams, Jan 13, 2010 IP
    atniz likes this.
  10. aukseo

    aukseo Peon

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    #10
    when you do change it i always find two sentences work. 1st about the product / page and the second sentance to entice the click e.g. an offer / discount
     
    aukseo, Jan 13, 2010 IP
  11. Canonical

    Canonical Well-Known Member

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    #11

    Changing your meta description is NOT going to affect your URL's rankings at Google. Google ignores meta description AND meta keywords from a ranking perspective. So you can change it to whatever you want and it will not affect your rankings.

    Optimizing your meta description IS however VERY important. Having a good meta description that gets displayed as the search snippet with a call to action can drastically improve your URL's click-thru-rates. However, Google doesn't always show the meta description as the search result. For this reason it's important to know how Google chooses the search result snippet.

    Basically, if a user searches for "keyword1 keyword2" and your meta description has both keyword1 and keyword 2 in it then Google will display your meta description as the snippet. If however your meta description does NOT contain all of the keywords from the search phrase then Google will construct a snippet. Your goal should be twofold:

    1) get your well crafted meta description to display as the snippet in the Google SERPs as often as possible
    2) write the meta description such that it will make people want to click-thru to your site to find out more (use a call to action and make SURE the meta description accurately describes what users will find on your page)
     
    Canonical, Jan 13, 2010 IP