Using Product Descriptions in Meta Description

[AMG100]

Hi All

We have over 10000 Products and a while ago we spent some time adding Product Descriptions to the Product Pages, For Example we have

Product - Black Snazaroo Face Paint

Product Description - Great for Childrens parties, fundraising events, Halloween or other festive faces. An easy makeup to apply and remove. All Snazaroo face paints are Non toxic, Fragrance free and Skin friendly. Snazaroo is suitable for all skin types, however it is always recommended you do a skin patch test on a small area before full application.

Unfortuantly our Meta Descriptions really need some work, for example this same page contains the following meta descriptions

We realise this could be holding our site back.

Is it ok to use the same Product Description inside the Meta Description Tags also, for example can we use the Meta Description for this Page -

Thanks

[AMG100]

Thank you Everybody for taking the time to Answer our Question

[David-Kley]

Its a tough call. Honestly I think it comes down to "Is it worth the time to optimize every page?" I would say yes, if you have the financial ability to do so. I don't think that Google looks at pages individualistically, and looks at the entire site as a whole. If you increase the entire quality score of your site, that will help you more than optimizing a few, or even in your case a few hundred pages. Chances are your competitors will not be going through the same amount of SEO work, and your site ranking will improve. We have tested this theory on many ecommerce sites hosted by us, and seen excellent results. Many smaller websites out rank the leaders like Home Depot, Ebay, Amazon, etc consistantly.

For your meta descriptions I would do something more like:

I know Matt Cutts states that meta descriptions don't have an impact on ranking, but I just flat out don't agree. Depending upon what you search for, you can clearly see the bolded and highlighted words in the link URLs, description, page title etc. Look at the bolded words in the sample above to think of what the description covers.

1. Childrens face paint
2. Halloween face paint
3. Black face paint
4. Face paint

If you so choose, you could also leave the descriptions blank, as long as your on-page descriptions absolutely rock. One rule we always follow internally: "You never know where Google will pull content from, so make sure anywhere they can is awesomely optimized" This would include titles, meta, on page, keywords, everything. Hope this helps!

[DonnaDuncan]

According to Matt Cutts, "... there are really only two viable options. You can either have unique metatag descriptions, or you can choose not to put any metatag description at all. Definitely don’t have duplicate metatag descriptions."

Often the best approach for e-commerce sites is to leave meta descriptions blank. Google will dynamically create them using text it derives from your page content, often highlighting the user's own search terms. I say that b/c: (a) it's a huge effort to come up with unique meta descriptions for thousands of products; (b) allowing Google to create them better ensures searchers will see their own search terms fed back to them in search results; and (c) thereby increases click thru rates.

[Hutch42]

Meta descriptions do not effect your page optimization in the sense that a search engine is effected by it, but it will effect how often people click to your site as the meta description is the copy a person is shown. You should make your descriptions informative and truthful so that it accurately portrays what each page has to offer giving a potential visitor the best ability to judge what content will be on the page (and thereby lowering bounces/re-searches). This being said you should write custom meta descriptions, not just let it truncate content already on your page.  I would start with products that are relevant to the most used keywords and work backwards, if you dedicate yourself to doing at least 20 descriptions a week you will have all of your legacy products done in a year.