Meta descriptions

[vibelingo]

Hi,

I have placed meta descriptions in a CMS for a client and afterwards checked with the SeoMoz tool "Page elements" that these are embedded correctly. However when checking the SERP for certain pages Google has "composed" the listing from other content than the meta description. What may be the reason, and how to avoid this?

[StalkerB]

First give it at least a week or so to update, it doesn't happen immediately.

But, yeah, Google does that sometimes if it finds a chunk of text it thinks is more relevant to the users' search. I've seen this mostly happen on pages with very little text content (image or video heavy pages say) but sometimes it's just because it doesn't think your description is relevant to your page.

I assume that it's from the page and not your DMOZ or YDIR description (if it is either of those add  or to your pages). Very small possibility if you've added a different description to a lot of other directories it's being picked up there.

Not too much you can do about it if none of these. Make sure your description is accurate and if it's more than 150 characters try to bring it in under that.

[krissy-cca]

Hey,

If you're description isn't as relevant to the keyword you've used to search for your site then search engines may decide to put something more relevant in the description that it has pulled off the page.

To remedy this try and rewrite your description to be more relevant to your targeted keyword.

Hope this helps

DD

[krissy-cca]

Sorry for double-post! ha

[vibelingo]

hi, thanks! The meta description is based on kw research and on page content so relevancy cannot be the issue. Probably they are not using meta-robots and they need to place the code you suggested...?

[vibelingo]

hi, thanks but the search to test this was with using the same keywords used for the title-tag and in the meta description and on-site content, so I'm ruling out lack of relevancy here.

[StalkerB]

The code I've suggested will only help if it's pulling the description from DMOZ or the Yahoo Directory. Do you have a listing in either? If so is it the same as what is showing?

Even if you do have a listing it doesn't necessarily mean that's where it's getting it from.

As I say, if you've just made the change, wait for a week or so and if your description is long then make it fit into a normal SERPs length snippet.

However it may be that you can't actually do anything to change Google's mind on what it shows for that search term (you may also find the snippet is different depending on what is searched for).

[krissy-cca]

Can you post us the URL or is it confidential? It'd be nice to have a look

[StalkerB]

Hi Damien,

Not a double post just because I got there first

Would always encourage people to chime in with their own opinions even if it just confirms what was said.

It can help the asker know if an answer is good advice or not

[vibelingo]

hi, I'd have to check with the client, but anyway it is in Norwegian so it would probably not help you much! But, the pages in question are not thin on content and are decisively on-topic.

[vibelingo]

Hi, there is a DMOZ listing so I could check that, thanks!

[StalkerB]

Det kan hjelpe

But yeah, if it's a decent description (and you seem to be happy with it) I'd look elsewhere for problems first.

[AaronSchinke]

True. I've even seem some instances of anchor text being used in descriptions.