I can't help but think something is wrong with my SEO
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So we re-launched our site about a month ago, and ever since we've seen a dramatic drop in search results (probably due to some errors that were made) when changing servers and permalink structure.
But, I can't help but think something else is at play here. When we write something, I can check 24 hours later, and if I copy the Title verbatim, but we don't always show up in SERPs. In fact, I looked at a post today, and the meta description showing is not the same, but when I check the source code, it's right.
What shows up in Google: http://d.pr/i/jGJg
What's actually in the source code: http://d.pr/i/p4s8
Why is this happening?
Website is The Tech Block
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I think it is part of the slider you are using for moving the posts. Not familiar with it, but that is what I think.
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Hey Robert,
I can't figure out exactly how I'd remove those? Do you think it's part of the header.php?
I can't seem to find a setting in posts that is pushing out two meta descriptions.
Anyone familiar with Yoast and why this is happening?
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Abdel
If you look at your meta desc with moz tools, you have multiple meta descriptions. This is not the result of Google being capricious, but of them not knowing what to pull.
Usually, this means within the SEO plugin you are using you have a meta description setting and within the page or elsewhere in the CMS you are sending a meta description.If you look at the img attached, you have a meta from featured news and that is what is being pulled in the snippet.
If there is a way to turn one on and the other off that would likely resolve the issue for you.
hope it helps.
[
](<a href=)" target="_blank">a> 1ZjWd.png -
Could it be because I don't have %%excerpt%% in my Posts Meta Description settings in Yoast?
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Google will pull the information THEY believe is most relevant for the meta description. I have had this issue in the past. Also, it could just pull this initial description for now and it could change over time - however on one site I am tracking this change specifically it has not changed in 3 months. Here is an SEOMoz post on this issue - http://www.seomoz.org/blog/why-wont-google-use-my-meta-description
An option would be to add the following additional robots meta info to the pages;
Why: CONTENT="NOODP" and CONTENT="NOYDIR"
This is so the search engines will show your preferred meta description tag (but this has to be corrected as indicated above and be keyword rich) over the information from Yahoo or DMOZ directories.
Barring this you could also "ping" your site - or submit it to Google for indexing here - http://www.google.com/submityourcontent/website-owner/
And finally use Google Webmaster Tools to see of they are coming up with any crawl errors - probably won't resolve this issue but will give you any additional insights.
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