Meta Tag Descriptions not being found in Moz Crawls
-
Hey guys,
I have been managing a few websites and have input them into Moz for crawl reports, etc.
For a while I have noticed that we were getting a gratuitous amount of errors when it came to the number of missing meta tags. It was numbering in the 200's. The sites were in place before I got here and a lot of the older posts no one had even attempted to include tags, links of the page or anything.
As they are all Wordpress Sites and they all already had the Yoast/Wordpress SEO plug-in installed on them, I decided I would go through each post and media file one at a time and update their meta tags via the plug in. I personally did this so I know that I added and saved each one, however the Moz crawl reports continue to show that we are missing roughly 200 meta tags. I've seen a huge drop off in 404 errors and stuff since I went through and double checked everything on the sites, however the meta tag errors persist.
Is this the case that Moz is not recognizing the tags when it crawls because I used the Yoast Plugin? Or would you say that the plugin is the issue and I should find another way to add meta tags to the pages and posts on the site? My main concern is that if Moz is having issues crawling the sites, is Google also seeing the same thing?
The URLS include:
sundancevacationsblog.com
sundancevacationsnews.com
sundancevacationscharities.comAny help would be appreciated!
-
Glad to hear it got resolved so quickly! Keep up the good job!
-
Great that you have it fixed! (Did you look in the Yoast settings to see if different post types have different settings? That could be part of your original problem...)
-
I have implemented a few changes on the site, including that of adding another plugin to add meta tags. As it appears, for some reason the Yoast plugin was adding a meta description for articles and posts, however it never included authors or page descriptions. Weird.
The page was re-crawled today and all of the Meta Tag errors are gone! Hooray! Now I just need to work on the super long titles that the writers before me used.
Thanks for the help to all the took the time to post!
-
You are correct, after doing some more looking around I have found the same things. Some of the pages have meta descriptions and some don't. It seems that Yoast is doing it's job, however I added a different plugin to help add some additional tags. That has also seemed to help, but again has not totally fixed the issue.
Clearly I am going to have to delve deeper into this as I have already taken a day up looking at it. I will edit a few more things and then re-crawl and see what I come up with. I'll post the results here as well.
-
Looking at the first one with Screaming Frog, there are 112 pages without descriptions.
Visually checking an example of those, http://sundancevacationsnews.com/, I see in the description, an empty description.
Checking one with a description: https://sundancevacationsblog.com/sundance-vacations-travel-advice/international/, I see
It just looks like some of them didn’t have descriptions added. Check back in Yoast again and look at the pages that Moz says have no description. Does anything look different in those than in the ones that do have descriptions?
I don't think the problem is the plug-in since both the pages with and without the descriptions are using it, and yes, Google will see the same thing.
-
Hi Jackie,
What I'd advise you to do, is to create a Screaming Frog Crawl so you can compare the two crawl data. If both show missing meta descriptions on the same pages, then there might be something on your side.
It is always good to double-check the information you are provided. So you are sure that the issue isn't a bug.
Gr., Keszi
P.S. I made a quick crawl with Screaming Frog on the first domain: sundancevacationsblog.com and found quite a big number of Missing Meta Titles.
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
-
Unsolved How to concat moz.com
Hello,
Moz Pro | | GrzegorzZ
I wanted to contact moz.com. I started my 30 day trial to test service.
After 2-3 days totally forgot about it. I remembered about moz.com when i received invoice saying they're gonna charge me.
I immediately wrote email to them that I do not want this service. I forgot and only put credit card data because i was required to. And would like a refund since it was 2-3 hours after bill. Unfortunately sending messages via their contact form is not an option. There is no confirmation on my email they received message nor return message from them.0 -
Should I set blog category/tag pages as "noindex"? If so, how do I prevent "meta noindex" Moz crawl errors for those pages?
From what I can tell, SEO experts recommend setting blog category and tag pages (ie. "http://site.com/blog/tag/some-product") as "noindex, follow" in order to keep the page quality of indexable pages high. However, I just received a slew of critical crawl warnings from Moz for having these pages set to "noindex." Should the pages be indexed? If not, why am I receiving critical crawl warnings from Moz and how do I prevent this?
Moz Pro | | NichGunn0 -
Title tags drawn from breadcrumbs
My client has a magento site that we've recently started working on. After the site was crawled by Moz a couple of times we noticed there was an issue with title tags being too long. However, when we looked closer at the data, Moz was seemingly picking up the breadcrumbs as the title tag. The actual tag is a small part of the breadcrumbs, but Moz was reporting they were the same. For example:
Moz Pro | | Stone_Junction
Breadcrumbs - home>products>category A of products
Title Tag - category A of products I just wondered if anyone else has had this problem? Is it Moz's mistake or is the title tag auto generating from the breadcrumbs and cutting off the beginning somehow? Any information would be really helpful, thanks.0 -
What is the best way to add a noindex./nofollow meta tags to tags in a blog?
Could anyone tell me the best way to add noindex./nofollow meta tags as I have around 12 duplicate tags in a blog. I have the Yoast SEO plugin - unpaid version.
Moz Pro | | SEM_at_Lees0 -
Moz crawl duplicate pages issues
Hi According to the moz crawl on my website I have in the region of 800 pages which are considered internal duplicates. I'm a little puzzled by this, even more so as some of the pages it lists as being duplicate of another are not. For example, the moz crawler considers page B to be a duplicate of page A in the urls below: Not sure on the live link policy so ive put a space in the urls to 'unlive' them. Page A http:// nuchic.co.uk/index.php/jeans/straight-jeans.html?manufacturer=3751 Page B http:// nuchic.co.uk/index.php/catalog/category/view/s/accessories/id/92/?cat=97&manufacturer=3603 One is a filter page for Curvety Jeans and the other a filter page for Charles Clinkard Accessories. The page titles are different, the page content is different so Ive no idea why these would be considered duplicate. Thin maybe, but not duplicate. Like wise, pages B and C are considered a duplicate of page A in the following Page A http:// nuchic.co.uk/index.php/bags.html?dir=desc&manufacturer=4050&order=price Page B http:// nuchic.co.uk/index.php/catalog/category/view/s/purses/id/98/?manufacturer=4001 Page C http:// nuchic.co.uk/index.php/coats/waistcoats.html?manufacturer=4053 Again, these are product filter pages which the crawler would have found using the site filtering system, but, again, I cannot find what makes pages B and C a duplicate of A. Page A is a filtered result for Great Plains Bags (filtered from the general bags collection). Page B is the filtered results for Chic Look Purses from the Purses section and Page C is the filtered results for Apricot Waistcoats from the Waistcoat section. I'm keen to fix the duplicate content errors on the site before it goes properly live at the end of this month - that's why anyone kind enough to check the links will see a few design issues with the site - however in order to fix the problem I first need to work out what it is and I can't in this case. Can anyone else see how these pages could be considered a duplicate of each other please? Checking ive not gone mad!! Thanks, Carl
Moz Pro | | daedriccarl0 -
Is it possible to exclude pages from Crawl Diagnostic?
I like the crawl diagnostic but it shows many errors due to a forum that I have. I don't care about the SEO value of this forum and would like to exclude any pages in the /forum/ directory. Is it possible to add exclusions to the crawl diagnostic tool?
Moz Pro | | wfernley2 -
Is The Crawl Diagnostic tool working correctly?
The Crawl Diagnostic tool shows issues and displays a graph but they don't display the page specific results/suggestion like it used to. I get the "Congratulations, there are no pages affected by this issue!" message.
Moz Pro | | -PAUL-0