Using alt-codes such as ? in META title / description
-
Noticed a search result recently that really caught my eye and certainly stood out among the other 10 results on the page, the META description contained the following snippet:
"Learn more about our ★★★★★ rated service..."
Any opinions on how using such alt-chars might effect search positioning when used in either the title or description META tags? The starts certainly looked very different to anything else on the page...
The claim of 5 star rated service was pretty much accurate so it was genuine and fair to use it...
-
Just my opinion here, since you have some great answers already:
I might be completely alone on this, but I definitely would encourage testing. Mock up some SERPs and do some user testing with Mechanical Turk to judge if it looks spammy, enticing etc..
Here's an example from Australia - Look for Travel Insurance Direct (should be #1) http://dis.tl/vph36j
I think it might be the only way we can add our personal touch in SERPs and I love creativity. Good luck!
-
I agree if it works them who am i to say it spammy, but then, what works for one person, may turn others off. but if the overall numbers increase then go for it.
Yanniocks example looks ok, not so spammy.
-
From a design standpoint I would say it could definitely be spammy if used obnoxiously. Similar to people using multiple exclamation points to get a point across.
From a marketing standpoint if it improves your CTR to put it into the description I say go for it.
I would however keep it out of the title tag.
Knowing that the title tag is heavily weighted I would try to get the best text in there as possible and provide context that helps your rankings and your CTR.
Finally I believe it has been mentioned in several places that using special characters in title tags is not the best idea as you aren't always sure how they will be treated by bots, or play with the algorithm.
So to me I would say use it tastefully (showing off your star rating is probably OK), and I would probably only put it in the description since this isn't heavily weighed in rankings, and is just used for messaging most of the time anyway.
-
A big player in the clothing retail in The Netherlands (where I live) is using it succesfuly. Look at this query and their results:
http://www.google.nl/search?q=zalando
Use it wisely. I agree with Alan that it can look spammy. So use a meta description viewer so you can immediatly judge if wat you made looks OK in the SE's. It definitely draws in my attention.
-
Well if Google is cool with it and it greatly increases click thru rates, it may be worth exploring.
Maybe not five stars in a row (that looks a bit over the top) but using a heart for example could be a good eye catcher.
-
I agree with Alan that if you put the stars in like that it looks spammy.
Perhaps the stars you are seeing are coming from reviews that are showing because the site is using Schema.org vocabulary on their pages.
See this excellent blog by CraigBradford:
Schema.org - Why You're Behind if You're Not Using It...
These stars are legitimate and the kind worth posting, but it will be some work for you.
HTH
-
My guess is this won't help and can only hurt in the title tag, since it is used for determining rankings, but could be used with no negative or positive rankings effects in the meta description which is not part of the ranking algorithm.
So I would experiment with this as a method of increasing click thru rate and test it on a small number of URLs.This could be an alternative to getting stars on a search result when you don't actually have ratings on a page that can be displayed by using microformatting.
-
i think it looks spammy myself. Just my opinion
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
-
Alt Text for Interior Design / Architecture Firm
I'm looking to update the alt text on my company's website to increase traffic and qualified leads. I've done some research on my own, but the alt-text examples i find are really simple and pertain more to ecommerce (i.e. leather boat shoe). We're an archteicture and interior design firm so we sell our design services. One of our goals is to get more projects in florida. I understand the best way to do alt-text is to describe the photo in as much detail as possible. But would it also help to plug in our services? Here are some examples i've thought of (i've attached the photo i'm describing) 1. Bright and airy coastal modern Palm Beach living room with abstract statement lighting
Technical SEO | | WorkshopAPD
2. Bright and airy coastal modern living room with abstract statement lighting by South Beach Interior Design Firm Workshop/APD J1x3AgC0 -
Very strange: META descriptions not showing
Hello, Since Panda 4.0 has been launched, all of my optimized META description have been gone in Google.
Technical SEO | | MarcelMoz
A while ago, I posted a question about this problem here: http://moz.com/community/q/all-meta-descriptions-gone. I know about Google's own will to decide which META description will be shown. And also about unique content of the descriptions. All pages did have an optimized description before Panda 4.0 and there were no troubles at all, what tells me there is something else going on. I tested some things: Rewrote 50 descriptions to very uinique ones, only five got indexed. This tells me that duplicate content of the descriptions is not the problem (they have never been 100% duplicate, product type was a variable which was always different for each page). Removed cache in GWT and fetched again as Google, didn't help. I checked the pages I tested and they all have been indexed again without showing the optimized descriptions. More information: The first time I changed some META descriptions and fetched the pages again in GWT, Google picked up my new META descriptions and showed them. A few days later, most of them disappeared again (so Google is aware of the description but seems to ignore it). Some pages show the optimized description when I change my search query (only a few, mostly the optimized description never got shown) Technique is ok. Source code shows the right optimized description. META robots isn't blocking anything except NOODP/NOYDIR (always has blocked those). Websites using the exact same CMS, website template, META descriptions (style and build-up), do not have these problems I compared elements like place of description in source code, usage of meta robots, og:description, crawl-delay in robots.txt, and special characters in descriptions between websites that are showing optimized vs. website that don't show optimized descriptions. I can't find any connection. Something I noticed is a change is my Robots.txt file: my webmaster has added the following command:
Crawl-delay: 2 May this have to do with my problem? I guess it doens't. I did some research and there are more websites that are suffering this problem beside mine. This tells me it must be Google (and so Panda 4.0) that is responsible for this change. I realy want my optimized descriptions back. Does anybody have an idea what to do?
Thanks in advance. Marcel0 -
Some posts not showing on Google search if I seach them using post title?
Hello! Some of my WordPress blog posts aren't showing on the Google search result, even if I type the post title. What could be the issue? Is it my site text selection disabled issue or WordPress SEO by Yoast plug-in issue or something else? Moreover, if I search some of my post text (article content), I can't see relevant post on Google search. I use following code to protect my articles. Is it SEO friendly? .content {
Technical SEO | | Godad
-webkit-user-select: none;
-khtml-user-select: none;
-moz-user-select: none;
-ms-user-select: none;
user-select: none;
} my site:- http://goo.gl/tD2fS Thanks!0 -
Correct Redirect method for switching pages from .html to /pretty urls/
I have a customer that has all his site files as .html extensions and i'm going to rebuild this site into a wordpress site for easier management, regarding the new permalink structure, should i just do a 301 redirect on this?
Technical SEO | | tgr0ss0 -
Will I still get Duplicate Meta Data Errors with the correct use of the rel="next" and rel="prev" tags?
Hi Guys, One of our sites has an extensive number category page lsitings, so we implemented the rel="next" and rel="prev" tags for these pages (as suggested by Google below), However, we still see duplicate meta data errors in SEOMoz crawl reports and also in Google webmaster tools. Does the SEOMoz crawl tool test for the correct use of rel="next" and "prev" tags and not list meta data errors, if the tags are correctly implemented? Or, is it necessary to still use unique meta titles and meta descriptions on every page, even though we are using the rel="next" and "prev" tags, as recommended by Google? Thanks, George Implementing rel=”next” and rel=”prev” If you prefer option 3 (above) for your site, let’s get started! Let’s say you have content paginated into the URLs: http://www.example.com/article?story=abc&page=1
Technical SEO | | gkgrant
http://www.example.com/article?story=abc&page=2
http://www.example.com/article?story=abc&page=3
http://www.example.com/article?story=abc&page=4 On the first page, http://www.example.com/article?story=abc&page=1, you’d include in the section: On the second page, http://www.example.com/article?story=abc&page=2: On the third page, http://www.example.com/article?story=abc&page=3: And on the last page, http://www.example.com/article?story=abc&page=4: A few points to mention: The first page only contains rel=”next” and no rel=”prev” markup. Pages two to the second-to-last page should be doubly-linked with both rel=”next” and rel=”prev” markup. The last page only contains markup for rel=”prev”, not rel=”next”. rel=”next” and rel=”prev” values can be either relative or absolute URLs (as allowed by the tag). And, if you include a <base> link in your document, relative paths will resolve according to the base URL. rel=”next” and rel=”prev” only need to be declared within the section, not within the document . We allow rel=”previous” as a syntactic variant of rel=”prev” links. rel="next" and rel="previous" on the one hand and rel="canonical" on the other constitute independent concepts. Both declarations can be included in the same page. For example, http://www.example.com/article?story=abc&page=2&sessionid=123 may contain: rel=”prev” and rel=”next” act as hints to Google, not absolute directives. When implemented incorrectly, such as omitting an expected rel="prev" or rel="next" designation in the series, we'll continue to index the page(s), and rely on our own heuristics to understand your content.0 -
MBG Tracker...how to use it?
So I am a new blogger that has been submitting guest blog posts to a number of different blogs. It was recommended that I use the MBG Tracker so I can track the back links. The problem is that I am totally lost on how to use this tool. As I said before I am new to this whole thing and I am not really sure what constitutes a "base link" and a "back link." In the author bylines we are linking to different pages within a larger website. If anyone can help me I would really appreciate it!
Technical SEO | | Stroll0 -
I use All in one SEO pack for wordpress and i i have 2 meta tags i need to delete them is this the meta description tag ?
add_option("aiosp_post_meta_tags", '', 'All in One SEO Plugin Additional Post Meta Tags', 'yes'); add_option("aiosp_page_meta_tags", '', 'All in One SEO Plugin Additional Post Meta Tags', 'yes'); add_option("aiosp_home_meta_tags", '', 'All in One SEO Plugin Additional Home Meta Tags', 'yes'); add_option("aiosp_do_log", null, 'All in One SEO Plugin write log file', 'yes'); */
Technical SEO | | fhnhockey0880 -
Coding - where to start?
I've been working in digital marketing for a few years and over the past 2, I've concentrated on getting my head around (or trying to!) the world of SEO. Everything from reading this forum, listening to webinars and re-reading the beginners guide to SEO has provided me with the confidence to put in actionable insights into my work such as on page optimisation, keyword research, link build and passing this knowledge onto co-workers However, one area I am beginning to realise is just as important is having the ability to code for yourself. Can anyone out there point me in the right direction of where to start, what I program I should concentrate on? and what I shuld focus my energies on? Any help would be great Simon
Technical SEO | | simonsw0