Duplicated titles and meta descriptions

[GhillC]

Hi,

Dealing with both my duplicated titles and meta descriptions i'm wondering if there's a "quick" win I could potentially implement asap.

A bit of background:
Say I've 4 pages structured that way:

• domain.com/us/productA.html for the US
• domain.com/gb/productA.html the UK
• domain.com/fr/productA.html for France
• domain.com/de/productA.html For Germany

At the moment, both my page titles and meta-descriptions are duplicated all over the place for product A.
Title is reading "Product A - company name"
MD is a bit better, being translated in all 3 languages (En, Fr, DE). Therefore being the same for the US and for the UK.

Ideally, I would get unique page titles and MD all over the place. However, due to time and resource constraints, I can't make it happen overnight.

So my questions are pretty simple:
1. Can I create a rule for page titles to be "Product A - country - company name" or similar? Would that be enough to make the page titles unique? Is there any value doing so?
2. Can I "localize" duplicate MD by simply naming the country? I assume it is not enough in this case as all the rest would be copy/pasted.

Ideally speaking, both my page titles and MD would be completely unique but I can't afford doing so in the short term.

Thanks!

[sarahwalsh]

it can involve a lot of work, but every meta title every meta description should be unique to that page and written in a white hat way.

It can cost a lot for a copywriter to do this work, but it is well worth it as it can improve the CTR.

[sarahwalsh]

it can involve a lot of work, but every meta title every meta description should be unique to that page and written in a white hat way.

It can cost a lot for a copywriter to do this work, but it is well worth it as it can improve the CTR.

[GhillC]

Thanks Kate, will do the best I can in the light of your answers.
But as you've probably understood by now, with quite limited resources.

[katemorris]

I know we are way too late for this, but why did your company decide to internationalize the site structure if you can't get localization resources. I would have suggested using cookies and JS to set the currency, etc.

Anyway to your questions:

Or am I chasing ghost and this rule won't change much in the eyes of Google and my ranking? You can implement the title rule above, but I don't think it is going to help much.

**I don't care so much if US content shows up in the UK in term of content though are eCommerce experts would be quite pissed off as it would biased reporting. **

I recommend setting up IP location detection. If the user SEEMS to be in a different country, ask them if they are from the other country and if they say yes, then redirect them there. Don't assume they are in a specific country though.

Focus on getting those resources, you won't make a big impact without them in a high competition area.

[GhillC]

Hi Kate,

Thank you so much for your answer. Some clarifications on your points:

On the competition part, there is a fair bit of competition indeed. But is an interim solution possible whilst more resources get eventually unlocked next year? And by an interim solution, I'm referring to that page title rule I mentioned in my question.
Or am I chasing ghost and this rule won't change much in the eyes of Google and my ranking?

I don't care so much if US content shows up in the UK in term of content though are eCommerce experts would be quite pissed off as it would biased reporting. From my point of view, the only issue is around currency if visitors then decide to purchase something.

Lastly, I can't do much when it comes to the duplicated content as I stated in a different question since there are no available resources to solve this from a content perspective nor from a site architecture standpoint.

[katemorris]

1. Can I create a rule for page titles to be "Product A - country - company name" or similar? Would that be enough to make the page titles unique? Is there any value doing so?
I think this depends on a few things.

**First, what is the competition like in the SERPs? if you are in a super competitive space in any of those countries, this is probably not going to be enough. But it is possible it would be in some but not others. Competitive markets are game changers. **

**Second, how much do you care if the US content shows up in the UK? I worry about the similarities of the content in your examples. A title tag can get stupid "duplicate title" warnings to disappear, but I can't promise it'll make a difference in the SERPs. **

There is no harm in trying, however.

2. Can I "localize" duplicate MD by simply naming the country? I assume it is not enough in this case as all the rest would be copy/pasted.

**Duplicate MDs are less of a worry from my perspective. What I'd worry about more is the duplication of the actual pages. The content on the page is infinitely more important than what is in the MD. **

[GhillC]

Thanks Tim.
I already have hreflang implemented and I wanted to dive more in the details of my international SEO so to speak.

Alternate meta is definitely something I'm considering as per my question. And from my understanding of it, the variants I'm proposing are not enough to differentiate them. Correct?

But what about title tags? Neither you or Roman mention them. They don't matter much?
According to this article, it does.

[GhillC]

You would not worry about this at all?
I mean, say I do what you suggested above, then I should still review my titles and meta descriptions as per my initial question right?

[TimHolmes]

Have you taken a look here - it provides you with quite a few quality nuggets of information on international SEO.

I would certainly consider hreflang and alternate meta to help distinguish each location channel to help reduce duplicate content.

There are some other great resources on this too.

[Roman-Delcarmen]

I would not worry about it, as long you made the right set it fo

• The canonical tags
• The language and region tags
• You submitted the sitemaps for every single region on Search Console
• Another good point to keep in mind is  adding schemas to your pages