Are correcting missing meta descrption tags a good use of time?
-
My modest website (shew-design.com) has pulled up nearly sixty crawl errors. Almost all of them are missing meta description tags. One friend who knows SEO better than me says that adding meta tags to EVERY page is not a good use of time. My site is available at shew-design.com
I'm just getting started in being serious about applying SEO to our site and I want to make sure I'm making the best use of my time.
The other error I'm getting are duplicate page names within different directories (e.g. getting started (for branding), getting started (for web). Is this a huge priority?
Would welcome your feedback.
-
It does. Thanks very much, Jared!
-
I'll give a two pronged answer: practical for your situation, and best practices.
Practical - No, it's not a huge priority, especially since you're just starting to get serious. It might be wise in your situation to focus on the other high impact changes that can be made in a short amount of time. The meta descriptions themselves don't help increase a shred of rank.
Best practice - Yes, you should definitely plan some time to fix these. Meta descriptions can be a powerful force for increasing click through rate from search results. So while there's not a direct SEO benefit, there's certainly enough reason to make time (eventually) to get all your meta descriptions in tip-top shape.
Hope that helps Eric!
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
-
Meta descriptions and h1 tags during a 301 redirect
My employer is shifting to a new domain and i am in the midst of doing URL mapping. I realize that many of the meta descriptions and H1 tags are different on the new pages - is this a problem ? Thank you.
Technical SEO | | ptapley0 -
Should I use canonicals? Best practice?
Hi there, I've been working on a pretty dated site. The product pages have tabs that separate the product information, e.g., a tab for specifications, a tab for system essentials, an overview tab that is actually just a copy of the product page. Each tab is actually a link to a completely separate page, so product/main-page is split into product/main-page/specs, product/main-page/resources, etc. Wondering if canonicals would be appropriate in this situation? The information isn't necessarily duplicate (except for the overview tabs) but with each tab as a separate page, I would imagine that's diluting the value of the main page? The information all belongs to the main page, shouldn't it be saying "I'm a version of the main page"?
Technical SEO | | anneoaks0 -
Div tags vs. Tables
Is there any reason NOT to code in tables (other than it being outdated) for SEO reasons?
Technical SEO | | EileenCleary0 -
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 -
Is Adobe Muse a good option?
We work with a number of clients that need a small website. Is Adobe Muse a good software for building solid, optimized websites? Is Muse better then Dreamweaver? Input please.
Technical SEO | | Lael0 -
W3C html5 meta tags invalid?
Dear Mozers, we get errors when validating meta tags in html5. I know it's experimental and not all metas are valid, but how do you handle this? Leave the tags out? here are some examples: `…name="DC.title" content="my content...xyc.." /**>**` ``` `>` ``` `>` ``` `>` ``` `>` `>` I tried to find some information but couldn't. What would you do? Thanks a lot, Barbara
Technical SEO | | barbara-f0 -
Our homepage currently uses a Meta refresh. Is it worth $1,000 to get it fixed?
Look at http://www.ccisolutions.com After the meta refresh takes place the homepage URL looks like this: http://www.ccisolutions.com/StoreFront/IAFDispatcher?iafAction=showMain I am trying to convince management that it is worth spending $1,000 with our current provider to get it fixed. It is my understanding that this meta refresh could be preventing the value of our homepage from being passed down to our category pages, etc. Can anyone give me something concrete that I can use to convince management that the fix is worth $1,000? Or is it not worth fixing?
Technical SEO | | danatanseo0 -
Google Off/On Tags
I came across this article about telling google not to crawl a portion of a webpage, but I never hear anyone in the SEO community talk about them. http://perishablepress.com/press/2009/08/23/tell-google-to-not-index-certain-parts-of-your-page/ Does anyone use these and find them to be effective? If not, how do you suggest noindexing/canonicalizing a portion of a page to avoid duplicate content that shows up on multiple pages?
Technical SEO | | Hakkasan1