Having problems resolving duplicate meta descriptions
-
Recently, I’ve recommended to the team running one of our websites that we remove duplicate meta descriptions. The site currently has a large number of these and we’d like to conform to SEO best practice. I’ve seen Matt Cutt’s recent video entitled, ‘Is it necessary for every page to have a meta description’, where he suggests that webmasters use meta descriptions for their most tactically important pages, but that it is better to have no meta description than duplicates. The website currently has one meta description that is duplicated across the entire site.
This seemed like a relatively straight forward suggestion but it is proving much more challenging to implement over a large website. The site’s developer has tried to resolve the meta descriptions, but says that the current meta description is a site wide value. It is possible to create 18 distinct replacements for 18 ‘template’ pages, but any sub-pages of these will inherit the value and create more duplicates. Would it be better to:
- Have no meta descriptions at all across the site?
- Stick with the status quo and have one meta description site-wide?
- Make 18 separate meta descriptions for the 18 most important pages, but still have 18 sets of duplicates across the sub-pages of the site.
Or…is there a solution to this problem which would allow us to follow the best practice in Matt’s video?
Any help would be much appreciated!
-
That sounds like an interesting suggestion and definitely something to look into, thank you. Sadly, the developer for the site is on holiday until next Monday, so I won't be to get an answer until next week.
Theoretically, if the changes were not possible, would it be better to have one single meta description on the home page and none across the rest of the site? Or would it be better to leave the site as it is?
-
I think your best option is to build out your CMS to add values for meta descriptions for each page. You should be able to have your developer build your CMS so that you can inject a meta description value for the page you are working on. This is pretty standard for in-house/WordPress/Drupal.
If your meta description is a site wide value, then the developer has just put one value into the header that loads for every page. You need to be able to customize this as a best practice, as you know. Building 18 template pages is more work than modifying the CMS to inject a meta value, so I wouldn't recommend it.
Is this an option for you?
-
If it is an in-house CMS I see no reason why you can't make your developer do the work to get it exactly how you want it. Otherwise, what's the bloody point in having a bespoke CMS?
Devs will nearly always say things aren't possible when they are. It's a constant battle. I know because I've battled it before.
I should say that I am not involved in this battle currently - our current dev is incredibly accommodating and just does everything I ask - believe me its a breath of fresh air and makes a massive difference. I have a situation where stuff our old dev said was impossible have suddenly become so!
-
Hi there, thanks for the reply. We are using an in-house CMS.
-
What kind of CMS are you using? Is it an in-house one or Wordpress/Drupal/etc.?
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
-
Is Google creating meta descriptions on the fly?
I'm doing some competitor analysis for a client. I'm looking at the client's title tags and meta descriptions for specific search results, in comparison to their main competitor. I'm trying to establish if the client is ranking higher due to better relevance, or just because they have higher PA and DA. It appears to be the latter. Observations: For both the client and their competitor, their home pages appear in the results much more frequently than specific landing pages The meta description Google chooses to display in the search results for the home page does not always match the ACTUAL meta description for the page and appears to vary depending on the specific search query Questions: Does Google create meta descriptions on the fly? Is this an example of Google using semantic search? And if so, why are we bothering to type customised meta descriptions for specific pages, if Google is just going to recreate them anyway? Is Google displaying results of the home pages simply because they cannot find pages more relevant (ie. if we produced landing pages more relevant to these specific search queries, would Google rank them higher)?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | muzzmoz0 -
Problem with Duplicate Page Wordpress
Hi all My name is Riccardo and i work for a web agency. I'am working on a new client website and i have found this kind of errors through MOZ (Image 1). I checked all the URLs; they work and they remind to the Homepage.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | advmedialab
The website is made with Wordpress. I have already tried to solve this problem with 301 redirect but, as i supposed, it didn't work.
I think that is a problem related to Wordpress URL in Wordpress settings (Image 2). However i would like to know if anybody had the same problem or if there are other possibile causes. Thank you in advance! zDVL0pj aB7MeGe0 -
Duplicate content on recruitment website
Hi everyone, It seems that Panda 4.2 has hit some industries more than others. I just started working on a website, that has no manual action, but the organic traffic has dropped massively in the last few months. Their external linking profile seems to be fine, but I suspect usability issues, especially the duplication may be the reason. The website is a recruitment website in a specific industry only. However, they posts jobs for their clients, that can be very similar, and in the same time they can have 20 jobs with the same title and very similar job descriptions. The website currently have over 200 pages with potential duplicate content. Additionally, these jobs get posted on job portals, with the same content (Happens automatically through a feed). The questions here are: How bad would this be for the website usability, and would it be the reason the traffic went down? Is this the affect of Panda 4.2 that is still rolling What can be done to resolve these issues? Thank you in advance.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | iQi0 -
Meta refresh bad for SEO
Hi there, Some external developers have created a wishlist for a website that allows visitors to add products to a wishlist and then send an enquiry. Very similar set-up to a shopping basket really (without the payment option). However, this wishlist lives in a separate iframe and refreshes every 30 seconds to reflect any items visitors add to their wishlist. This refreshing is done with a meta refresh. I'm aware of the obvious usability issue that the visitor's product only appears after 30 seconds in their wishlist. However, are there also any SEO issues due to the refreshing of the iframe every 30 seconds? Please let me know, whether small or large issues.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Robbern0 -
Duplicate content in external domains
Hi,
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | teconsite
I have been asking about this case before, but now my question is different.
We have a new school that offers courses and programs . Its website is quite new (just a five months old) It is very common between these schools to publish the courses and programs in training portals to promote those courses and to increase the visibility of them. As the website is really new, I found when I was doing the technical audit, that when I googled a text snipped from the site, the new school website was being omitted, and instead, the course portals are being shown. Of course, I know that the best recommendation would be to create a different content for that purpose, but I would like to explore if there is more options. Most of those portals doesn't allow to place a link to the website in the content and not to mention canonical. Of course most of them are older than the new website and their authority is higher. so,... with this situation, I think the only solution is to create a different content for the website and for the portals.
I was thinking that maybe, If we create the content first in the new website, send it to the index, and wait for google to index it, and then send the content to the portals, maybe we would have more opportunites to not be ommited by Google in search results. What do you think? Thank you!0 -
Problem with internal links
Hello! Our domain, http://www.unionroom.com/, is having a strange issue with OSE in that it is telling us our internal pages aren't linking to one another. An example of this is that it is showing our About page ( http://www.unionroom.com/about/ ) only having three links, but this link appears twice on every single page on the website (~200 pages) in the header and footer. We've hung around for a little while to see if OSE would correct itself, but it hasn't and this now suggests that it may be an issue with our in-linking structure. Can anyone spot any issues with our build? The rest of the websites that we produce, that are all built in the same way, all have healthy internal linking structures according to OSE. Very confusing! Any help would be greatly appreciated.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | unionroom0 -
SEO Problem with PowerPoint to PDF?
Can anyone think of any reasons why it would be a bad idea to use PowerPoint to create documents and then convert them to PDFs? Do you think this could cause any crawling issues for Google?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BlueLinkERP0 -
Duplicate Content - Panda Question
Question: Will duplicate informational content at the bottom of indexed pages violate the panda update? **Total Page Ratio: ** 1/50 of total pages will have duplicate content at the bottom off the page. For example...on 20 pages in 50 different instances there would be common information on the bottom of a page. (On a total of 1000 pages). Basically I just wanted to add informational data to help clients get a broader perspective on making a decision regarding "specific and unique" information that will be at the top of the page. Content ratio per page? : What percentage of duplicate content is allowed per page before you are dinged or penalized. Thank you, Utah Tiger
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Boodreaux0