Should I put meta descriptions on pages that are not indexed?
-
I have multiple pages that I do not want to be indexed (and they are currently not indexed, so that's great).
They don't have meta descriptions on them and I'm wondering if it's worth my time to go in and insert them, since they should hypothetically never be shown.
Does anyone have any experience with this? Thanks!
The reason this is a question is because one member of our team was linking to this page through Facebook to send people to it and noticed random text on the page being pulled in as the description.
-
If you are sending Facebook and Twitter Trafic to these pages try and use Facebook OpenGraph and Twitter Cards
-
Hi Brittany,
While it is not essential to have meta descriptions for each page, especially if they are not indexed by Google, there can still be some benefit to having meta descriptions for pages people are linking to. Users can see the meta description if the page shows up during a search query, and sites with strong meta descriptions tend to come across as more professional. There is always a chance the page can show up in other search engines and directories, so you won’t want to worry about random text showing up. There is no real ranking benefit to meta descriptions, but Google does indicate whether meta descriptions are too long, too short, or too similar in Webmaster Tools, so it would seem Google would consider proper meta descriptions to be of at least some value.
-
Brittany,
You need to come up with a strategy and stick with it. You didn't say what type of page your "No Index" page is. But you may have a very good reason why you classify it a no index page. It just seems counter productive to no index that page or a group of pages, but yet encourage social media to link to it.
Heck no one wants to go back later and optimize a page that should have been optimized to begin with. Normally we use a template when building a web page so that all of items we want to index for are conveniently available to drop into the page being built.
A sound strategy of how pages are linked, keywords to use for each category, and titled will in the long run be easier to maintain, and make upgrading later so much more easy, rather than trying to go back and change an ever increasing mountain of pages later as your strategy changes.
-
I think you hit the nail on the head with your last line. I would do it just for the social share pulling up the snippet that you have crafted versus some random part of the page getting ripped out of it.
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
-
Should search pages be indexed?
Hey guys, I've always believed that search pages should be no-indexed but now I'm wondering if there is an argument to index them? Appreciate any thoughts!
Technical SEO | | RebekahVP0 -
I am trying to generate GEO meta tag for my website where on one page there are multiple locations My question is, Can I add GEO tagging for every address?
Am I restricted to 1 geo tag per page or can i add multiple geo tags ?
Technical SEO | | lina_digital0 -
Should you use google url remover if older indexed pages are still being kept?
Hello, A client recently did a redesign a few months ago, resulting in 700 pages being reduced to 60, mostly due to panda penalty and just low interest in products on those pages. Now google is still indexing a good number of them ( around 650 ) when we only have 70 on our sitemap. Thing is google indexes our site on average now for 115 urls when we only have 60 urls that need indexing and only 70 on our sitemap. I would of thought these urls would be crawled and not found, but is taking a very long period of time. Our rankings haven't recovered as much as we'd hope, and we believe that the indexed older pages are causes this. Would you agree and also would you think removing those old urls via the remover tool would be best option? It would mean using the url remover tool for 650 pages. Thank you in advance
Technical SEO | | Deacyde0 -
How to stop google from indexing specific sections of a page?
I'm currently trying to find a way to stop googlebot from indexing specific areas of a page, long ago Yahoo search created this tag class=”robots-nocontent” and I'm trying to see if there is a similar manner for google or if they have adopted the same tag? Any help would be much appreciated.
Technical SEO | | Iamfaramon0 -
How do I get google to index the right pages with the right key word?
Hello I notice that even though I have a site map google is indexing the wrong pages under the wrong key words. As a result its not as relevant and is not ranking properly.
Technical SEO | | ursalesguru0 -
Can I put the tag in the MasterPage of my ASP.NET website or does this need to be specific to each page?
Hi Moz Community, I am a designer/junior SEO'er and have been working with our web developer to setup SEO oriented redirects and the rel canonical tag on our ASP.NET page running MasterPages - www.tisbest.org. I know setting up an incorrect canonical tag can be devastating so I'm hoping for some guidance. Can we put the <title> </span>Charity Gift Cards | Donation Gift Ideas | TisBest Philanthropy</p> <p style="color: #5e5e5e; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal;"><span style="color: #5e5e5e;"> </span></p> <p style="color: #5e5e5e; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal;"><span style="color: #5e5e5e;"></title> Thanks! Chad
Technical SEO | | TisBest0 -
Index page 404 error
Crawl Results show there is 404 error page which is index.htmk **it is under my root, ** http://mydomain.com/index.htmk I have checked my index page on the server and my index page is index.HTML instead of index.HTMK. Please help me to fix it
Technical SEO | | semer0 -
Secondary Pages Indexed over Primary Page
I have 4 pages for a single product Each of the pages link to the Main page for that product Google is indexing the secondary pages above my preferred landing page How do I fix this?
Technical SEO | | Bucky0