Hi

 

At present when I search the key phrase 'indoor venues northampton' my site (http://www.bouncebusters.co.uk/indoor_venues.html) is ranking top however I would like to change Googles describing text. If you take a look at the attachment google.jpg you will see how its showing at present. I believe that the text could be more descriptive but I don't know how to change it. Can anybody help?

 

 

Regards

Rich

You need to change the meta description in the head section buddy.

 

Place this in your head section.

 

<meta name="description" content="YOUR DESCRIPTION GOES HERE " />

Edited November 28, 201114 yr by jheg

Hi rich, I notice you have the meta description in place and it is quite long. Google is taking bits from that that it thinks is the most appropriate and the result isn't great.

 

For more control you should think about condensing the description to the most basic essential things and word it carefully.

A lot of the time, Google will use what it thinks, even if you've set a description yourself. For example, say you've set a description that Google determines isn't related to the content of your page - Google will use it's own description.

 

I agree 100% with rallport. I will add that if you have a page that shows up in search results for multiple keywords, Google can have different descriptions for the same page, depending on the keyword that is being searched.

your best bet is to keep your meta description over 70 characters, but below 165 and keep it relevant to what the page content is. If you want to achieve results too, then adding a good CTA (call to action) cant hurt.

 

Good luck

Edited April 11, 201214 yr by jamesosix

If you want to achieve results too, then adding a good CTA (call to action) cant hurt.

 

A CTA for a TV commercial - SURE...A CTA for a Meta Description - NO. I respectfully must disagree with you. The only scenario that I can think of where a CTA would be appropriate(and not hurt you with Google) is if that particular page was dedicated to a promotion that required an action from the user...even then "promotion" or a similar word would probably need to be in the keyword...that's all still a BIG maybe in my opinion and I would stay faaaarrrr away from call-to-actions in meta descriptions and keep those CTA's for banner ads, opt-in email marketing and TV commercials. SUNDAY, SUNDAY, SUNDAY...click here, come and get it....you can't miss this deal! Do very much of that and you are going to flirt with being black-balled...in my opinion

I think I'll have to disagree with you on this one Bohn. A user who has searched for something on Google will, 9/10, have no relationship with yours or anyone else's website and are given a list of 10 organic results along with PPC's and local search. That's a lot of information to take in and your meta description has mere seconds to attract a click from the user. Sure, being first is nice but in the meantime you have to compete with a number of other websites.

 

I think gone are the days where you see a call to action like

 

!!**>>>CLICK HERE FOR AMAZING DEALS ON PHOTOCOPIERS<<<**!!

Why not have a CTA such as a phone number? Or advertise your lowest price? What if I offer a product that is £5 and everyone else is £10? Surely the best way to get someones attention is to place it in the meta description?

 

"We're Music Corp (0800 123456), the leaders in Guitars. Why not have a look at our range, starting from as little as £5"

 

It offers a telephone number, so if you're searching Music Corp for their number then they can easily contact you. Plus you're letting people know what you have to offer, before they land on your website.

 

Surely you use CTA's on your websites? It's not all about screaming and shouting at a user to buy something, it's about gently nudging them through a well constructed conversion funnel, or prompt them to make an enquiry

You make some very good and logical points. However, from a competitive SEO standpoint, particularly for high volume keywords, there are some things I recommend taking into consideration...

 

Why not have a CTA such as a phone number?

 

Phone numbers for businesses are included in Google Maps/Local/Places. Additionally, this is where your sitelinks can come into play. For example, having a "contact" page in your sitelinks is one way to achieve this...at least how Google seems to prefer. Also, if you put your phone number in all of your descriptions it is possible to get tagged for duplication in Google Webmaster Tools. Keep in mind that some of these things are relative to the keywords being typed by the user. Google also manipulates your descriptions based on the keywords being used. For example, if the user searches for "MusicCorp phone number" then Google will often manipulate the description anyways to include the number or Google will bring up the sitelinks and/or the Google Maps info for that specific business search. It can, and often does, grab text from the body of the page being listed.

 

Or advertise your lowest price? What if I offer a product that is £5 and everyone else is £10? Surely the best way to get someones attention is to place it in the meta description?

 

This is what Google Shopping Results were designed for. Search for "guitars" on Google.... A very competitive search phrase I might add. When I searched this keyword, "Guitars" from my location, there is not a single "regular" search result (that uses meta description) on the first page that has a price listed. However, on the "shopping results" you will see prices, but this is of course separate from meta descriptions we speak of.

 

"We're Music Corp (0800 123456), the leaders in Guitars. Why not have a look at our range, starting from as little as £5"

 

It offers a telephone number, so if you're searching Music Corp for their number then they can easily contact you. Plus you're letting people know what you have to offer, before they land on your website.

If you know the name of the business, then google places/maps listing for the business should appear and/or the sitelinks with their contact link.

 

Surely you use CTA's on your websites? It's not all about screaming and shouting at a user to buy something, it's about gently nudging them through a well constructed conversion funnel, or prompt them to make an enquiry

 

I absolutely agree with you that CTA's can and should be part of a business website and it is a more appropriate place for CTA, as I mentioned in "banners" being one of the appropriate places for a call-to-action...banners that can apply for 3rd party advertisers on a website, or, for the website owner's products/services.

Edited April 12, 201214 yr by BohnStudios

You're making huge assumptions here about where the listing is displayed. What if the website isn't on the local results or shopping results? Obviously, there is the aim should the website be e-commerce. But that isn't always going to be the best solution for a website.

 

I do a lot of work for a paintball company. Sites are located all around the UK and their keywords are often "Paintball London" or Paintballing in Scotland". Sometimes, the keyword is that niche that it doesn't trigger the local results and obviously doesn't trigger the shopping results. But, they're still selling a product and it's the first page of the SERPs is littered with competition. What if a user is on their phone and they search Paintball Nottingham (My city) and see that the venue does paintball from 5 quid and it has the number? They can quickly ring and find out more information.

 

You mention about sitelinks etc. Great point, if the user knows the company name. But what if they don't. What if their search term doesn't trigger all these?

 

Again, in an ideal world then yes the shopping results etc etc are the key. But it's not often like that, or isn't the solution for the website.

 

PS Interesting point about the meta description. I only put the phone number on the homepage, as my research shows that if someone is searching for "Music Corp Location" they aren't bothered about the number. Or if they search for "What is Music Corp" then they want to read about it.

 

But I might do some experiments and use SEOMoz to see what the thresold for duplicate meta description is

I'm not talking about screaming CTA, as Jason says, subtle ones to gently nudge the seearcher to your site.

 

Personally I wouldnt include a phone number in the meta description, but thats just me. I dont really think it helps the work I do, but it may work for other companies.

 

Also you do make lots of assumptions but in the case of the OP I stand by his meta desc should be over 70 chars, under 165 chars and have a subtle cta.

 

Surely that would be much better than what it currently is?

Edited April 12, 201214 yr by jamesosix

interesting post's

Anyone have experience of rich-snippets and structured data in this regard?

 

I suspect that certain CTA keywords ("easy" "best" "cost-effective" etc) in meta descriptions can cause Google to ignore them - anyone else found this?

Hi

 

At present when I search the key phrase 'indoor venues northampton' my site (http://www.bouncebus...oor_venues.html) is ranking top however I would like to change Googles describing text. If you take a look at the attachment google.jpg you will see how its showing at present. I believe that the text could be more descriptive but I don't know how to change it. Can anybody help?

 

 

Regards

Rich

 

Well, if you just want the snippet of your website to change in what google displays in the search results, you need to change the META description of your home page post (s) from which you want the description to appear and do a little more backlinking to that page. Hope this helps!

Hi

 

At present when I search the key phrase 'indoor venues northampton' my site (http://www.bouncebus...oor_venues.html) is ranking top however I would like to change Googles describing text. If you take a look at the attachment google.jpg you will see how its showing at present. I believe that the text could be more descriptive but I don't know how to change it. Can anybody help?

 

 

Regards

Rich

 

Hi Richard,

 

It seems nobody has actually mentioned here that Google do not read meta tags! The only way you can try to help Google with each of your pages organic descriptive text is to simply ensure your titles and content is descriptive.

 

When a person Google's a search term Google will deliver the most relevant sites in order right? Well as part of this Google will also show up sites specific pages that are relevant to that search query, it will in turn show a snippit of that specific pages text that is relevant to the search query. So what I am saying is that you really do not have much control over those in Google as it is Google's algorithm that decides that!

 

Check out these couple of videos from Matt Cutt's (Google's head of web spam team)

+

Google ignores the Meta Keyword tag, not the meta description tag. Im not sure where you read that they completely ignore all meta tags, but that's just plain wrong.

 

Description tags are not ignored. The only time Google will use snippet of text from your website is when you don't use the meta description tag.

 

You're right that Google ignores them completely when it comes to ranking, but ignoring the description tag is wrong because test's show they can hugely increase your click through rate from the search engine result pages

I did not say they were completely ignored, but can you guarantee that they will read it and use it?

 

Putting all the "Tech stuff" aside, I live by these rules:

 

Google does it's best to provide searchers with the very best results using the given search term. Users of the internet read what they see on a page. Therefore adding meta descriptions or any other content that can't be seen by the reader / user of a website is irrelevant to the reader.

 

Remember! Google are very insistent that one does not try to manipulate the search results. In my opinion and from being a Google user myself, I prefer search results to be relevant to the content on the page I find, not what has been put in the meta description simply for the search engines benefit.

It's not a case of trying to manipulate the results. Descriptions have absolutely no weight in SEO.

 

But would you rather present your user with a well crafted description tag that contains the a sort summary of what is on the website. OR a completely random chunk of text that Google thinks is relevant.

 

I know which one I'd rather do. Remeber, they have no benefit for the search engines, it's about telling your user what your website is about.

 

I think you have it mixed up that people only use them "fool" the search engines

Thanks for the reply Jason, I do not profess to be an "SEO" expert I simply see things from the searchers point of view.

 

You of course are indeed an SEO expert and I have no intention on telling you how to do your job. I would like to add though that I concentrate on the quality of the content that I write and this has proved effective for me over the years.

 

I honestly feel that sometimes people can spend so much time and effort trying to optimize their pages that the content itself suffers. I try to find the line between the two, I also try to interpret Google's guidelines as best as I can, as we all do no doubt

Sorry I didn't mean to appear like whatever I said was SEO gold.

 

It just felt like you weren't understanding what the description tag is there for thats all. As I have said before, it has absolutely no weight, bearing or anything else to do with SEO.

 

No amount of keyword-stuff will change that. It's about labeling your website for users to make an informed decision. Like the blurp on the back of the book; it summises the content of the book.

 

I know some people are different but lets use the examples and tell me which one is more inviting:

 

Mansfield Web design, printing and Graphic Design agency, Specialists in responsive web design, Clients in Mansfield, Nottinghamshire & surrounding areas.

 

OR

 

take your business from the initial logo design to the web site, promotional material and beyond. We’ve been around now for 9 years and in this time Full Phat....

 

The first being the description text of a local company and the second being a bit of random text I ripped from their website.

 

Description meta tags are there so you can quickly and easily inform the user about your website. You know more about your website than google, so why leave it to them?

So, if I use a meta description - google will always choose that, over picking its own snippet? I got a client see, and for some reason google is using on page content for the snippet, when I have used the meta tag..

 

Cheers

Edited September 25, 201213 yr by jamesosix

So, if I use a meta description - google will always choose that, over picking its own snippet? I got a client see, and for some reason google is using on page content for the snippet, when I have used the meta tag..

 

Cheers

 

Hi James,

 

I personally do not use meta descriptions, thought I do know that many people do believe that paying attention to meta tags, such as keywords, description and canonical URL's may help obtain better search engine positioning, It has over and over again become clear to me that Google will choose it's own "snippet" from the real content of the page, not the meta content added by a human!

 

Like I added before in one of my last posts, webmasters optimize by search terms they want to rank highly for. People search for what they want to. So how can the webmaster optimize the page for the many thousand ways of searching of a search term that has say "6+ words" ? Gone are the days where people search in two or three words.

 

This is why I "believe" that for the user / searcher, it is a better search experience for Google to decide what the snippet will be, not the web master!

Thanks for the reply mylocaltrades, appreciated. I do think google is doing more snippets now, on its own accord, however I dont always agree google is better informed that any professional who may be say - employing their own copywriter to make an appealing description etc.

 

I understand people will always try and abuse it, but as Jason points out, nobody has anything to gain by cheating it now, because a proper constructed cta will work over a keyword stuffed description.

 

Cheers

I did not say they were completely ignored, but can you guarantee that they will read it and use it?

 

Remember! Google are very insistent that one does not try to manipulate the search results. In my opinion and from being a Google user myself, I prefer search results to be relevant to the content on the page I find, not what has been put in the meta description simply for the search engines benefit.

 

When you say 'they' I assume you mean google. The meta description is not for google to read and increase your position in SERPS it is so users can see a list of links with a description about each site below. If the webmaster has not included a meta description then google will make its own up based on a snippet from the page. However it is better for the webmaster in many cases to make up their own description so as to serve as a better hook to get users to chose your link over your competitors. It has absolutely nothing to do with manipulating search results.

 

 

I personally do not use meta descriptions, thought I do know that many people do believe that paying attention to meta tags, such as keywords, description and canonical URL's may help obtain better search engine positioning, It has over and over again become clear to me that Google will choose it's own "snippet" from the real content of the page, not the meta content added by a human!

 

Again don't put meta description and meta keywords in the same bracket they are totally unrelated. Keywords are not used by google as a ranking factor anymore and so serve zero purpose (although recently they may be making mini comeback for news sites?). If some people believe that paying attention to meta keywords may help obtain better search engine positioning they are wrong.

 

 

If people try and abuse it, they'll hurt their click through rate.

 

Have a look at http://www.seomoz.org/q/meta-description-not-showing-up-on-google James. Okay, when I said they'll always use your meta description, I was wrong. But 99% of the time, they will choose it.

Cheers mate, will have a read of that after work. Seems my client was the 1%! haha.

 

Thanks

The same problem! However, I got the issue with title tags.

If you search the keyword "web design quotes", this site http://www.proweb365.com/services will rank on top 10. However, the title that Google using is "Web Design Quote - Minneapolis Web Design"...I have never used this title on this page. So, I think the problem that is Google algorithm.

Most of the time Google will read meta title, and meta description, and then show them to search result. However, in some case, I don't know how and why, Google take some text on body text to show in the description or title. Therefore, Don't worry about this. You may replace a new description in meta tags, and then wait for Google update. Besides, I saw that, event Google did dot take the correct title. However, my site still rank ok. I don't lost any ranking.

@proweb365: Remove H1 tag on that page

Hello,

 

just change meta description.

Hello,

 

just change meta description.

 

This thread is from last year.

use the Meta description, its helps you alot. the following code apply on head section of html.

 

<meta name="description" content=" Write the Description of your Page length upto 170">

Edited March 12, 201313 yr by dreamcyberdci

Do you know anything about meta tags. You can use meta tags to put whatever you want to show for your website on google. There is a meta title tag and then the meta description tag. The meta title tag should have the text that will be showing as the title in the google search and the meta description tag would show the text in the description section.

 

<title>your title</title>

<meta name="description" content="your description" />

 

Remember to put these tags in the head section.

Do you know anything about meta tags. You can use meta tags to put whatever you want to show for your website on google. There is a meta title tag and then the meta description tag. The meta title tag should have the text that will be showing as the title in the google search and the meta description tag would show the text in the description section.

 

<title>your title</title>

<meta name="description" content="your description" />

 

Remember to put these tags in the head section.

What a catch!