Quotes in Meta Tags

So, you are seeing strange results on you webpage … your meta description is showing on the page and it shouldn’t … what gives?  Maybe you recently added schema.org tags to your site and now those are showing on the page and shouldn’t … what is going on?

A common issue that can cause text to show up on your website that you don’t want is the use of quotes.  Let us look at the meta description tag.  It commonly looks like this:

<meta name=”description” content=”Here is my description for Google SEO.  I sure hope Google finds me!”>

Now let’s say you have a quote in the content of your tag, like this:

<meta name=”description” content=”Blue Ball.  10″ diameter. $4.50.”>

This will cause a problem with the meta tag because the quote after diameter actually closes the quote after the content=.  Herein lies the problem.  So we really want a quote as it means inches in this case.  What can we do?

Use the HTML code for quote:  &quot; .  Yes, this looks strange, but it will solve your problem.  Your meta tag should now look like this:

<meta name=”description” content=”Blue Ball.  10&quot;  diameter. $4.50.”>

Have tons of products in a spreadsheet … do a find and replace on the column that needs it.

Use this method in ALL your meta tags to stop any unforeseen problems.  :O)