Wordpress Product SEO query

[Richard P]

I have a website which sells products developed in Wordpress.

Going through the yoast optimisation what I notice is that I score low because the way the site is set up it only uses the Product short description, and not the main description for a product.

When I add content to the main description my yoast score improves. My question is can I simply add content to the main description (even though it is not displayed) and if so will duplicating the short description penalise my seo ?

Many thanks.

 

[Community]

It depends on how your pages display on the page its self, some developers seem to just hide elements with CSS instead of removing them properly, so although the main description doesnt show it may still be rendered in the page and therefore still visible to Google bots.

That said, the yoast traffic light signals are a guide on the backend, they do nothing more than give you an indication of a well optimised page, so you could just write it originally in the main description to make sure the score is reasonable, then copy it into the short description.

 

[nshep]

It depends on how your pages display on the page its self, some developers seem to just hide elements with CSS instead of removing them properly, so although the main description doesnt show it may still be rendered in the page and therefore still visible to Google bots.

That said, the yoast traffic light signals are a guide on the backend, they do nothing more than give you an indication of a well optimised page, so you could just write it originally in the main description to make sure the score is reasonable, then copy it into the short description.

Exactly. Yoast is a guideline that doesn't/can't always take into account your particular setup. If your main concern is that you score low, you can copy the content to the main description. This will allow you to see whether everything else is set up correctly and if the missing main description is the only issue.

 

[Jennifer Neon]

I have a website which sells products developed in Wordpress.

Going through the yoast optimisation what I notice is that I score low because the way the site is set up it only uses the Product short description, and not the main description for a product.

When I add content to the main description my yoast score improves. My question is can I simply add content to the main description (even though it is not displayed) and if so will duplicating the short description penalise my seo ?

Many thanks.

Hi @Richard P,
I hope you are doing good. No, you'll not be penalized for doing so. Yoast helps you give SEO suggestions that could give you a good position on SERPs and are not against the search engine guidelines.