Need for a modified meta-description every page for paginated content?
-
I'm currently working on a site, where there url structure which is something like: www.domain.com/catagory?page=4. With ~15 results per page.
The pages all canonical to www.domain.com/catagory, with rel next and rel prev to www.domain.com/catagory?page=5 and www.domain.com/catagory?page=3
Webmaster tools flags these all as duplicate meta descriptions, So I wondered if there is value in appending the page number to the end of the description, (as we have with the title for the same reason) or if I am using a sub-optimal url structure.
Any advice?
-
We don't have a view all page(We found them so slow, so long, and with so meny links we had a notable improvement in rankings in general when switching to the quicker paginated versions). And other then the first page none of the other pages are currently in our site map.
I'm not entirely sure how that would stop gwt flagging it as a duplicate meta though. Less you imply to also no-index them.
-
Do you have "View All" as an option for your paginated pages? If not, you might consider it, and then just include the "View all" version of the page in your site map. Just a thought...
-
That scale of unique descriptions is well beyond our capacity. We're actually considering dropping the number of items per page too.
Thanks for the help.
-
Could ignore cause any problems? (such as pages that should/shouldn't be indexed) I was rather suprised to discover that using cannonical wasn't enough.
-
I believe appending the page number, for example: (Page 3 of 5) to the end of the meta description would suffice from SEOmoz's crawler's or GWT's perspective, however, the best would be to have the ability to create completely unique meta descriptions.
-
It sounds like you have canonical and rel next/prev setup correctly so you shouldn't worry about duplicate meta descriptions. You could add ?page= as a query string to "ignore" in WMT and then it will ignore those pages and you won't be getting any errors from duplicate meta's on those pages.
Hope this 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
-
Canonical urls - do my web pages need them?
Hello, I'm going round in circles with this issue, so hopefully someone can help... The Moz crawl of my website lists a number of pages as "missing canonical url". The pages are all different and do not have similar content. Do I need to add a canonical url to each page? My agency quoted the following (x referencing this page: https://developers.google.com/search/docs/advanced/crawling/consolidate-duplicate-urls) list itemYou would use Canonical URLs if: list item"...you have a single page that's accessible by multiple URLs, or different pages with similar content (for example, a page with both a mobile and a desktop version), Google sees these as duplicate versions of the same page." list itemThis is not the case here and so we would not propose to change anything. We could add Canonical URLs if the client feels that it is critical which occurs an additional cost. Any help / advice much appreciated. Thanks
Technical SEO | | rj_dale0 -
Car Dealership website - Duplicate Page Content Issues
Hi, I am currently working on a large car dealership website. I have just had a Moz crawl through and its flagging a lot of duplicate page content issues, these are mostly for used car pages. How can I get round this as the site stocks many of the same car, model, colour, age, millage etc. Only unique thing about them is the reg plate. How do I get past this duplicate issue if all the info is relatively the same? Anyone experienced this issue when working on a car dealership website? Thank you.
Technical SEO | | karl621 -
Repeating Content Within Code On Many Pages
Hi, This is sort of a duplicate content issue, but not quite. I'm concerned with the way our code is written and whether or not it can cause problems in the future. On many of our pages (thousands), our users will have the option to post comments. We have a link which opens a JavaScript pop-up with our comments guidelines. It's a 480 word document of original text, but it's preloaded in the source code of every page it appears on. The content on these pages will be relatively thin immediately, and many will have thin content throughout. I'm afraid so many of our pages look the same in both code and on-site content that we'll have issues down the line. Admittedly, I've never dealt with this issue before, so I'm curious. Is having a 480 word piece of text in the source code on so many pages an issue, or will Google consider it part of the template, similar to footer/sidebar/headers? If it's an issue, we can easily make it an actual pop-up hosted on a SINGLE page, but I'm curious if it's a problem. Thanks!
Technical SEO | | kirmeliux0 -
Missing meta descriptions from Google SERPs
Hullo all, I run an e-commerce website and hence have a lot of product category/sub-category pages to handle. Despite giving each of these category pages meta descriptions, in the Google SERPs, a lot of these descriptions don't show up fully. Rather, only half the text that I'd inputed as my meta desc. shows up; the other half has generic stuff from that page given. I've attached a screen shot to give you an example of what comes up in the SERPs. Could you please tell me what exactly is the problem? Is it a coding issue? Or has Google not crawled that page? Need help asap! Thank you in advance! aE9RKXJ
Technical SEO | | suchde0 -
Should I Parent/Child my Website Pages (need help with terminology too)
Hello I have a website that I am trying to SEO optimise.
Technical SEO | | NikitaG
The current structure of the site is that all pages are linked directly after the domain:
example: www.domain.com**/page01** www.domain.com**/page02** The website is however logically organised in the following form:
www.domain.com**/page01/page02** Sometimes the parenting goes to 3 levels: (please help me with the right term here) Domain
↳ Page001
↳ Page002
↳Page003 My question is: should keep the current structure, or is it worth the effort to re-link the website in a parented way. Are there any benefites to one or the other, and could you point to some video tutorials or documentation to read. BqoDAsx.jpg DMMIC5o.jpg0 -
Meta Tag Description Warning is wrong. Description is indexed and shows.
My crawl report shows that there are 22 Meta Tag Descriptions missing. I double checked on Google and it shows the meta descriptions just fine. What's wrong with the report or am I missing something?
Technical SEO | | onlinemarketersdotca0 -
Issue: Duplicate Page Content
Hi All, I am getting warnings about duplicate page content. The pages are normally 'tag' pages. I have some blog posts tagged with multiple 'tags'. Does it really affect my site?. I am using wordpress and Yoast SEO plugin. Thanks
Technical SEO | | KLLC0 -
I want my Meta Description re-indexed fast!
We have an old meta description that advertises an old offer (FREE X if you Buy Y) that we are no longer running on the site. I changed the meta description, now what is the fastest way I can get Google to update their SERP with the new description?
Technical SEO | | pbhatt0