Are ALL CAPS construed as spamming if they are used in a meta description tag call to action?
-
I know this seems like an old school question. As a long time SEO I would never use ALL CAPS in a title tag (unless a brand name is capitalized). However I recently came across a Moz video about creating better calls to action in the meta description tags. Some of the examples had CTAs that were using all caps (i.e. CALL NOW! or LOWEST QUOTES!)
I realize there is a debate about the user experience implications. However I'm more concerned about search engines penalizing websites that are using ALL CAPS CTAs in their meta description tags.
Any feedback/advice would be appreciated.
Thanks
-
Hi,
I'm using CTA in all caps and many other SEO's also used and not heard any penalty due to this ever. Second meta description is not a ranking factor it is just to increase CTR.
**Don't use whole meta description in caps only CTA part in caps e.g FREE DELIVERY OR FREE SHIPPING.
Thanks
-
Hi Rosemary,
I know ALL CAPS have been known to hurt CTR. If I am searching google and I see a title tag or meta description with phrases in all caps like CHEAP, BUY HERE, etc., I tend to lean toward the opinion of thinking the content is spammy and click on something that looks a bit more professional.
Also, take a look at Googles product search editorial guidelines here. https://support.google.com/manufacturers/answer/6124110?hl=en
In it they state, "Avoid any repeated and unnecessary use of punctuation, capitalization or symbols. Don't use exclamation points in your product titles. The use of symbols, numbers, and letters should adhere to the true meaning of the symbol."
I would err on the side of caution purely because CAPS can hurt CTR. I don't think there is a consensus on whether or not CAPS can help/hurt your ranking in the SERPs (there has been evidence that suggests both) from an SEO perspective.
Hope that helps!
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
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
-
Use of "/" and using fractions in titles
We are a company that sells pipe and fittings. An example of a part that someone will search for is : 3/4" PVC Socket I am not sure how best to represent the fraction in the title of the page that has such a product. I am concerned that if I use the forward slash it will be misinterpreted by search engines (although it will be interpreted properly by users). A lot of folk search for the product by the fraction size and so it would be good to be able to represent it in the title, but I don't want to get "punished" by confusing search engines. I could replace the forward slash with a hyphen or pipe symbol, but then may look a bit weird to our users... Any recommendations? Bob
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BobBawden11 -
Migrating to WooCommerce, similar product descriptions but with different urls, cant use variations.
Hi! Ime quite new to SEO and to woocommerce so please help out with this one.. We are migrating from Ithemes Exchange over to WooCommerce and i have come up with some issues. We are selling adhesives and some of the products have the same name and description, the only thing that seperates them are sometimes the widht, or the length on the roll.. As we have it now we have a separate product page for each widht and length. For example here http://siga-sverige.se/siga/fentrim-2-100/ and here http://siga-sverige.se/siga/fentrim-2-150/ The above product pages are for a product called Fentrim 2. its availiable in widhts from 75 to 300mm.. so, its six diffent products pages with more or less the same description. I get that this will create duplicate content, couse the description on the pages are similar.. We cant use variations in woocommerce, couse this cant be set up to exactly match our shipping needs, so, we need them on separate pages.. Soo, my plan is to set a new product page for Fentrim 2, ex http://siga-sverige.se/siga/fentrim-2 and then set that url as canonical url for the variations of the product.. Am i on the right track? Gratefull for any help on this one! / Jonas
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | knubbz1 -
Title Tag Verses H1 Tag. Is having both the same better than different if there's only one clear winner in keyword search volume
Hi Mozzers, I am going through my categories on my eccomerce hire site trying to improve things and just wanted to check this query with you My understanding is that if I have the same H1 and title tag, then that would give more weight for that keyword phrase? Would I also be correct in assuming that the H1 is more important than the title tag or should both be treated as equals in terms of SEO. My dimemla is that for certain products we hire, there's only really one clear winner in terms of keyword phrase. The others I find in keyword planner are way down the volume list , so I have tended to put the H1 and title tag as the same and then have H2 tag and a slightly different heading. Is that the best philosphy or should I really mix them up , so the the title tag, h1, h2 are different ? Also Currently My on page content mentions the the H1 tag near the beginning of the content. Is this correct or should I really be using the H2 tag phrase near the beginning of the content. For example - One of the products we hire out is carpet cleaners. Therefore the main keyword phrase is carpet cleaner hire
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | PeteC12
and for our local pages its' carpet cleaner hire <city name="">.
This is my title tag and H1 tag and then for my h2 tag , I have something like "carpet cleaning equipment" with the content
mentioning carpet cleaner hire near the beginning.</city> I don't want to look likes its over optimization or mention the word hire to much but being a hire website, it's difficult not to and other keywords that don't mention it in it, are to varied so could increase bounce rates ?. When I look in GWT against my content keywords - the word hire shows a full bar. Just wondered what peoples thoughts are if what I am doing it okay?
thanks
Pete0 -
Is anyone here using Triond? What do you think about it?
I noticed that a few people are using Triond.com to do "guest post".Is that a good way to diversify the link profile and get more traffic? Is anyone here using Triond? What do you guys think about the service?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Felip31 -
Using standard title and description tags with rich snippets are there potential conflicts
Recently I've employing rich snippets using the guides from schema.org I find them a great way to let the search engines understand the content of my web pages, also author and publisher tags are all thrown into the migreat great love it. My question however is what to do with the existing title and description tags? Should they be left in? Do they cause conflicts with the search engines? Should I just ignore this gut feeling and leave them in. Any insights into the use of schema and a standard tags appreciated. Best David
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | David-E-Carey0 -
Meta NoIndex tag and Robots Disallow
Hi all, I hope you can spend some time to answer my first of a few questions 🙂 We are running a Magento site - layered/faceted navigation nightmare has created thousands of duplicate URLS! Anyway, during my process to tackle the issue, I disallowed in Robots.txt anything in the querystring that was not a p (allowed this for pagination). After checking some pages in Google, I did a site:www.mydomain.com/specificpage.html and a few duplicates came up along with the original with
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | bjs2010
"There is no information about this page because it is blocked by robots.txt" So I had added in Meta Noindex, follow on all these duplicates also but I guess it wasnt being read because of Robots.txt. So coming to my question. Did robots.txt block access to these pages? If so, were these already in the index and after disallowing it with robots, Googlebot could not read Meta No index? Does Meta Noindex Follow on pages actually help Googlebot decide to remove these pages from index? I thought Robots would stop and prevent indexation? But I've read this:
"Noindex is a funny thing, it actually doesn’t mean “You can’t index this”, it means “You can’t show this in search results”. Robots.txt disallow means “You can’t index this” but it doesn’t mean “You can’t show it in the search results”. I'm a bit confused about how to use these in both preventing duplicate content in the first place and then helping to address dupe content once it's already in the index. Thanks! B0 -
Should I use the main keyword in the title tag for the site on all category pages?
I am pretty excited about changing all my title tags (for the most important 7 pages) since I have seen my rankings jump up in the SERP just by adding the main keyword for my website in the title tag. To make it easier I will explain my business. Simply, I run an online jewelry shop, so basically the keywords I want to use is "Jewelry online" and for the main categories "Necklace", "Rings" and "Bracelets". What I am unsure about is whether to use all the keywords in the main pages title tag or should I just use the main keyword "Jewelry online". I don’t want to create competition between my own pages of course. Jewelry Online - Trendy Fashion Jewelry | Homepage Or Jewelry Online - Necklace, Rings, Bracelets | Homepage And the same goes for the main categories, should I include "jewelry online" or not, like: Bracelets - Fashion Jewelry Online | Homepage Or Bracelets - Trendy_ Bangles_ and Arm Cuffs | Homepage Any suggestions what is the best practice for the title tag on main page and the main categories? Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ikomorin0 -
Meta Description In Blog Feed
The SEOmoz crawl tool is giving me a lot of crawl errors because my blog feed and my blog tags do not have meta descriptions. Can you even give this type of content meta descriptions? If so how can you do it, as this content is created dynamically by Wordpress?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | MyNet0