1. Advertising
    y u no do it?

    Advertising (learn more)

    Advertise virtually anything here, with CPM banner ads, CPM email ads and CPC contextual links. You can target relevant areas of the site and show ads based on geographical location of the user if you wish.

    Starts at just $1 per CPM or $0.10 per CPC.

Odd meta description issue

Discussion in 'Search Engine Optimization' started by mherzber, Feb 2, 2017.

  1. #1
    I have an odd meta description issue where Google is not picking up the meta description in the code.
    I used MozBar which shows the meta description in the source but actual Google SERP page does not use the same description. I see a few things and have a few hunches but I can't pin down an exact pattern. This is a client site that I am providing SEO content development services and do not have access to the CMS/ code so some of these I can't get my hands on to fix. I would like to try to narrow down what the issue is before I suggest anything. To start here is a screengrab of the source code for one of the offending pages.

    https://www.evernote.com/shard/s1/sh/e0d49a35-3725-4a4c-b684-21fe60067424/ec5a9ce4ab7b83afef1c2494eaca1fcb

    • Theory one - There are meta title, DC meta title and <title> tags in the source
    • Theory two - There are a number of W3C code errors, again I would fix these but I don't have access to the code and want to be sure I am right if I suggest this as the issue
    • Theory three- A number of pages have "similar" not " 100% duplicate" meta descriptions. But there is no pattern of why some pages use the correct meta description and some do not.

    I can definitely start to experiment with all of the above ways to fix but I would rather cut the repair time if someone can pick out something I am missing more quickly.

    Note: I'm hoping I can get input without sharing a link to the site. I don't have access to code right now but if I strongly sense that is the cause I can instruct the dev team to make code adjustments. Like I said, I just want to be on the right path before I share that as an option if I am wrong.

    Thanks for any help you can provide
     
    mherzber, Feb 2, 2017 IP
  2. Toka97

    Toka97 Active Member

    Messages:
    71
    Likes Received:
    3
    Best Answers:
    1
    Trophy Points:
    80
    #2
    Meta description just "tells" Google what you would like to show on SERP however if Google decides meta description isn't good enough for content it will create meta description from page content itself.
    So you should try to create better meta description with page content & keywords included
     
    Toka97, Feb 10, 2017 IP