Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
How does the use of Dynamic meta tags effect SEO?
-
I'm evaluating a new client site which was built buy another design firm. My question is they are dynamically creating meta tags and I'm concerned that it is hurting their SEO. When I view the page source this is what I see.
<meta name="<a class="attribute-value">keywords</a>" id="<a class="attribute-value">keywordsGoHere</a>" content="" /> <meta name="<a class="attribute-value">description</a>" id="<a class="attribute-value">descriptionGoesHere</a>" content="" /> <title id="<a class="attribute-value">titleGoesHere</a>">title>To me it looks like the tags are not being added to the page, however the title is showing when you view it in a browser and if use a spider view tool, it sees the title. I'm guess it is being called from a DB. So I'm a little concerned though that the search engines are not really seeing the title and description. I'm not worried about the keywords tag.
Can anyone shed some light on how this might work? Why it might not being showing the text for the description in the page code and if that will hurt SEO?
Thanks for the help!
-
Bryan,
If you go to google's cached version of one of those and don't see a title or description in the source code then for sure google isn't seeing it. In that case, Google will create it's own meta date for the page based on the page's content. While this isn't actually the worst case scenario, (creating bad meta data yourself would be the worse case), it means that you're giving control of that data to the search engines and not being specific in what you want the page to rank for or how you want to present the snippet to the visitor.
-
If the content is generated before the page is served to users and search engines they will see it like any other page. Check out the source code of the page, if the content is in there you are fine.
-
Go to GWT > Crawl > Fetch as Google and enter the URL you wish you spider. If the results come back and you see the meta info as it should be, then there shouldn't be a problem.
Also, I recommend removing meta keywords. They don't help SEO in any way and can be used by competitors for keyword research.
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 using a subheading to introduce a section before the main heading bad for SEO?
I have noticed a popular trend in web design which involves sections of content being started with what looks to be smaller sub heading something like <h3>, <h4> or <h5> and then followed by a bigger heading <h2>. My question is, what is the best way to deal with this visual structure and will having a structure like this hurt your SEO? <h5>Contact Us</h5> <h2>Get started with your next project in minutes!<h2> <p>Some text here ...</p> Here are some examples where the header structure is similar to above (smaller before bigger): https://www.snappr.com/ https://form.taxi/ https://fluz.app/ If that structure is bad for SEO, then it seems like a simple solution is to make it purely visual, mimicking a sub header with styling on a span or paragraph like these sites do: https://www.andrejilderda.nl/ https://nightwatch.io/ https://www.swingvy.com/ https://www.figma.com/ My only concern with that approach is because your section sub heading is no longer an actual header you will miss out on ranking important and relevant keyword information for that section. Is this correct something to be worried about? There is one last solution I stumbled upon that involves using headings for both but in reverse hierarchy so a <h3> is first but styled to be smaller, followed by a visually bigger <h4> which provides the addition context. https://avocode.com/ Anyone have thoughts, expertise or resources on the matter?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | si.analytics0 -
Using a Reverse Proxy and 301 redirect to appear Sub Domain as Sub Directory - what are the SEO Risks?
We’re in process to move WordPress blog URLs from subdomains to sub-directory. We aren’t moving blog physically, but using reverse proxy and 301 redirection to do this. Blog subdomain URL is https://blog.example.com/ and destination sub-directory URL is https://www.example.com/blog/ Our main website is e-commerce marketplace which is YMYL site. This is on Windows server. Due to technical reasons, we can’t physically move our WordPress blog to the main website. Following is our Technical Setup Setup a reverse proxy at https://www.example.com/blog/ pointing to https://blog.example.com/ Use a 301 redirection from https://blog.example.com/ to https://www.example.com/blog/ with an exception if a traffic is coming from main WWW domain then it won’t redirect. Thus, we can eliminate infinite loop. Change all absolute URLs to relative URLs on blog Change the sitemap URL from https://blog.example.com/sitemap.xml to https://www.example.com/blog/sitemap.xml and update all URLs mentioned within the sitemap. SEO Risk Evaluation We have individual GA Tracking ID and individual Google Search Console Properties for main website and blog. We will not merge them. Keep them separate as they are. Keeping this in mind, I am evaluating SEO Risks factors Right now when we receive traffic from main website to blog (or vice versa) then it is considered as referral traffic and new cookies are set for Google Analytics. What’s going to happen when its on the same domain? Which type of settings change should I do in Blog’s Google Search Console? (A). Do I need to request “Change of Address” in the Blog’s search console property? (B). Should I re-submit the sitemap? Do I need to re-submit the blog sitemap from the https://www.example.com/ Google Search Console Property? Main website is e-commerce marketplace which is YMYL website, and blog is all about content. So does that impact SEO? Will this dilute SEO link juice or impact on the main website ranking because following are the key SEO Metrices. (A). Main website’s Avg Session Duration is about 10 minutes and bounce rate is around 30% (B). Blog’s Avg Session Duration is 33 seconds and bounce rate is over 92%
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | joshibhargav_200 -
Move to new domain using Canonical Tag
At the moment, I am moving from olddomain.com (niche site) to the newdomain.com (multi-niche site). Due to some reasons, I do not want to use 301 right now and planning to use the canonical pointing to the new domain instead. Would Google rank the new site instead of the old site? From what I have learnt, the canonical tag lets Google know that which is the main source of the contents. Thank you very much!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | india-morocco0 -
Bad SEO Practice: in title tag?
Greetings, I just discovered that some of our content was produced with
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Eric_Lifescript
tags in the title tag. Example: <title>Diabetes Symptoms <br> In Women Over 40</title> My gut says this is bad for SEO, but I couldn't find a definitive answer on the web, so I thought I would ask the community of gurus here at Moz. 🙂 Thanks in advance for any reply. Kind regards, Eric0 -
CDN for SEO (or not)?
Does CDN impact on SEO or not? There seems conflicting ideas as to whether they impact positively or negatively, I realise that if the page loads quicker this is a good thing for SEO and usability of course. Does Google see CDN as just cheating and a get-around for not doing the work from the ground up and using good hosting etc? Do you have any direct experience? All constructive input much appreciated!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | seoman101 -
SEO time
I wanto to be in the top of the google search. I am usiing a lot of SEO tools but... I have done it during one month. Do I have to wait more?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | CarlosZambrana0 -
Better to use specific cities or counties for SEO geographics?
Hello SEO experts! We are encountering a difficult situation at our marketing firm with a client who wants to optimize her site for keyworks + counties, as she doesn't want to be restricted to one specific city. We have suggested alternate solutions like location pages, utilization of H2's, etc, however, she wants to know the effectiveness of using a specific city (ie: Winona, MN) vs a county (ie: Winona County, MN) for SEO purposes. The research I have conducted thus far hasn't gotten me very far, basically I'm seeing that it all comes back to what people search for (cleaning services in Winona, MN vs. cleaning services in Winona County, MN). Does anyone have any insight into this issue?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | MLTGroup0 -
Meta tags - are they case sensitive?
I just ran the wordtracker tool and noticed something interesting. The tool didn't pick up our meta description. It's strange as our meta descriptions appear in organic search results and Moz never reported missing meta descriptions.After reviewing other pages, I noticed our meta description tag is written as the following: name="Description" content=" I never thought about this, but are meta tags case sensitive? Should it be written as: name="description" content=" Thoughts?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Bio-RadAbs0