Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
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
-
Should I use the on classified listing pages that have expired?
We have went back and forth on this and wanted to get some outside input. I work for an online listing website that has classified ads on it. These ads are generated by companies on our site advertising weekend events around the country. We have about 10,000 companies that use our service to generate their online ads. This means that we have thousands of pages being created each week. The ads have lots of content: pictures, sale descriptions, and company information. After the ads have expired, and the sale is no longer happening, we are currently placing the in the heads of each page. The content is not relative anymore since the ad has ended. The only value the content offers a searcher is the images (there are millions on expired ads) and the descriptions of the items for sale. We currently are the leader in our industry and control most of the top spots on Google for our keywords. We have been worried about cluttering up the search results with pages of ads that are expired. In our Moz account right now we currently have over 28k crawler warnings alerting us to the being in the page heads of the expired ads. Seeing those warnings have made us nervous and second guessing what we are doing. Does anybody have any thoughts on this? Should we continue with placing the in the heads of the expired ads, or should we be allowing search engines to index the old pages. I have seen websites with discontinued products keeping the products around so that individuals can look up past information. This is the closest thing have seen to our situation. Any help or insight would be greatly appreciated! -Matt
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | mellison0 -
How do Yelp and Justia get all the extra Meta Description Real estate?
I was doing some KW research for a client and noticed something interesting with regard to Yelp and Justia. For a search on DWI Attorneys, they each had over 300 character meta descriptions showing on the SERP without truncating. Everyone else was either truncated or within limit of roughly 160 characters. Obviously if there is a way to get something other than a list to show that way you can own some real estate. Would love to hear from some of you Mozzers on this. Here are two images that should assist. Best Edit: I found one that was not a directory site and it appears it is Google doing it. The site has no meta description for the home page and this is what is being pulled by Google. There are 327 characters here! The truncation marks are showing it being pulled from different parts of the page. Image is Killeen DWI Attorney. NOTE None of these are clients, etc. I also changed the cities so this is a general search. zAQpA qZ9KI 06p7U
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | RobertFisher1 -
Can subdomains avoid spam penalizations?
Hello everyone, I have a basic question for which I couldn't find a definitive answer for. Let's say I have my main website with URL: www.mywebsite.com And I have a related affiliates website with URL: affiliates.mywebsite.com Which includes completely different content from the main website. Also, both domains have two different IP addresses. Are those considered two completely separate domains by Google? Can bad links pointing to affiliates.mywebsite.com affect www.mywebsite.com in any way? Thanks in advance for any answer to my inquiry!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | fablau0 -
Using hreflang for international pages - is this how you do it?
My client is trying to achieve a global presence in select countries, and then track traffic from their international pages in Google Analytics. The content for the international pages is pretty much the same as for USA pages, but the form and a few other details are different due to how product licensing has to be set up. I don’t want to risk losing ranking for existing USA pages due to issues like duplicate content etc. What is the best way to approach this? This is my first foray into this and I’ve been scanning the MOZ topics but a number of the conversations are going over my head,so suggestions will need to be pretty simple 🙂 Is it a case of adding hreflang code to each page and creating different URLs for tracking. For example:
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Caro-O
URL for USA: https://company.com/en-US/products/product-name/
URL for Canada: https://company.com/en-ca/products/product-name /
URL for German Language Content: https://company.com/de/products/product-name /
URL for rest of the world: https://company.com/en/products/product-name /1 -
Should I use change of address when moving to subdomain
Hi guys So we had a domain that was only for one country, www.example.com 1 year later we decided to go to another country so we will have all the current website under a country subdomain like : ae.example.com we did a 301 redirect
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | awrikat
Should I perform a change of address action from www.example.com to ae.example.com ? please help
Thanks0 -
Meta Robot Tag:Index, Follow, Noodp, Noydir
When should "Noodp" and "Noydir" meta robot tag be used? I have hundreds or URLs for real estate listings on my site that simply use "Index", Follow" without using Noodp and Noydir. Should the listing pages use these Noodp and Noydr also? All major landing pages use Index, Follow, Noodp, Noydir. Is this the best setting in terms of ranking and SEO. Thanks, Alan
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Kingalan10 -
<aside>Tag Use</aside>
Hi Guys, Just after some clarification - I have recently been told that by placing content in <aside></aside> tags spiders will ignore the content. Is this the case? I always thought that content placed in these tags was to identify related content. To put the query into some context, we have the same content on multiple pages on a site, which is relevant to the main body copy - but could throw up duplicate content issues... Thanks in advance.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | SEOBirmingham811 -
After reading of Google's so called "over-optimization" penalty, is there a penalty for changing title tags too frequently?
In other words, does title tag change frequency hurt SEO ? After changing my title tags, I have noticed a steep decline in impressions, but an increase in CTR and rankings. I'd like to once again change the title tags to try and regain impressions. Is there any penalty for changing title tags too often? From SEO forums online, there seems to be a bit of confusion on this subject...
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Felix_LLC0