Templates for Meta Description, Good or Bad?
-
Hello, We have a website where users can browse photos of different categories. For each photo we are using a meta description template such as:
Are you looking for a nice and cool photo? [Photo name] is the photo which might be of interest to you.
And in the keywords tags we are using:
[Photo name] photos, [Photo name] free photos, [Photo name] best photos.
I'm wondering, is this any safe method? it's very difficult to write a manual description when you have 3,000+ photos in the database.
Thanks!
-
I really like Dana's response - it covers the primary consideration - how much time would it REALLY take to write unique Meta descriptions? If the TRUE answer is "unrealistically too much time", then a template COULD work. The trick though is addressing the issues Dana talks about.
If you only use a primary product name as the variable, you run risks. If you have a 2nd database field you have that includes some differentiation between otherwise identical products, that can help. As long as you understand total length as a consideration.
-
I think this is an excellent question. It's something that was in place where I am the in-house SEO when I came on board. After two years of kicking and screaming, I finally got buy off on doing away with the template. Here's why I didn't like it:
- It caused a lot of duplicate content problems. We have products that might be alike in every way with the exception of a microphone frequency band. Often, this information wasn't included in the product name/title, and consequently, when it was used to populate the meta description "template" we ended up with tons of duplicates.
- Problems with length. We had templated copy that worked just find for about 75% of our brands and products, but some of our brand names and products names were much longer, resulting in the templated descriptions being too long and getting truncated, totally defeating their own purpose.
- Poor user experience. Many of our competitors use templated meta descriptions, specifically Sweetwater, Musician's Friend and Guitar Center. Nearly all of their descriptions are 100% identical with the exception of products swapped in and out. From a searcher's standpoint, this kind of sucks because it doesn't tell me anything interesting about the product.
- Lost marketing opportunity - Are you really going to use the same marketing message for every single product on your site? That's a huge opportunity lost I think.
Okay, maybe if we were a huge brand like Sweetwater, it just wouldn't matter and we could get away with this because brand recognition would be strong enough to outweigh the fact that there was nothing of unique interest in the description...But, we aren't Sweetwater, so making every marketing opportunity count to us is crucial. We have about 3,000 SKUs, and a tiny marketing department. Somehow we're managing to crank out those unique descriptions just fine. 3,000 really isn't that many. If it does get to be too much, scaling this with freelancers would be extremely easy and cheap to do provided you lay down clear parameters for exactly what you want.
My advice? Take the time to add unique descriptions...oh, and forget about populating the meta keywords. You don't need to do that any more.
Hope that's helpful!
Dana
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
-
Good to use disallow or noindex for these?
Hello everyone, I am reaching out to seek your expert advice on a few technical SEO aspects related to my website. I highly value your expertise in this field and would greatly appreciate your insights.
Technical SEO | | williamhuynh
Below are the specific areas I would like to discuss: a. Double and Triple filter pages: I have identified certain URLs on my website that have a canonical tag pointing to the main /quick-ship page. These URLs are as follows: https://www.interiorsecrets.com.au/collections/lounge-chairs/quick-ship+black
https://www.interiorsecrets.com.au/collections/lounge-chairs/quick-ship+black+fabric Considering the need to optimize my crawl budget, I would like to seek your advice on whether it would be advisable to disallow or noindex these pages. My understanding is that by disallowing or noindexing these URLs, search engines can avoid wasting resources on crawling and indexing duplicate or filtered content. I would greatly appreciate your guidance on this matter. b. Page URLs with parameters: I have noticed that some of my page URLs include parameters such as ?variant and ?limit. Although these URLs already have canonical tags in place, I would like to understand whether it is still recommended to disallow or noindex them to further conserve crawl budget. My understanding is that by doing so, search engines can prevent the unnecessary expenditure of resources on indexing redundant variations of the same content. I would be grateful for your expert opinion on this matter. Additionally, I would be delighted if you could provide any suggestions regarding internal linking strategies tailored to my website's structure and content. Any insights or recommendations you can offer would be highly valuable to me. Thank you in advance for your time and expertise in addressing these concerns. I genuinely appreciate your assistance. If you require any further information or clarification, please let me know. I look forward to hearing from you. Cheers!0 -
Meta Titles and Meta Descriptions are not Indexing in Google
Hello Every one, I have a Wordpress website in which i installed All in SEO plugin and wrote meta titles and descriptions for each and every page and posts and submitted website to index. But after Google crawl the Meta Titles and Descriptions shown by Google are something different that are not found in Content. Even i verified the Cached version of the website and gone through Source code that crawled at that moment. the meta title which i have written is present there. Apart from this, the same URL's are displaying perfect meta titles and descriptions which i wrote in Yahoo and Bing Search Engines. Can anyone explain me how to resolve this issue. Website URL: thenewyou (dot) in Regards,
Technical SEO | | SatishSEOSiren0 -
Blogger to Wordpress 301 and Meta Refresher Redirect
Hi Everyone! So my client has a blogger that she has developed a good amount of link equity for. It is a hersite.blogspot.com (she doesn't own her own domain yet). She is moving to the Wordpress platform though and the only way we can do a redirect is through a meta refresh redirect (since she doesn't have access to the servers on blogger). I went to Google Webmasters to do a change of address and found that the 301 checker said it couldn't find any 301 redirect, which is disappointing. What we're planning is telling all the places that link to the blog to change their links to the new blog but other than that what does anyone recommend to keep this link strength? Thanks!
Technical SEO | | mattdinbrooklyn0 -
My Home Page meta title on Google isn't what it should be
Hey guys My website is http://www.oxfordmeetsfifth.com According to SEOcentro, my website should appear to Google as Fashion Tips for Women | Oxford Meets Fifth. I have used the Yoast plugin and force rewrote titles to ensure that is the home page meta title. It also appears correctly in browser. Could anyone advise why this is the case? Thanks in advance!
Technical SEO | | OxfordMeetsFifth0 -
How can I block incoming links from a bad web site ?
Hello all, We got a new client recently who had a warning from Google Webmasters tools for manual soft penalty. I did a lot of search and I found out one particular site that sounds roughly 100k links to one page and has been potentialy a high risk site. I wish to block those links from coming in to my site but their webmaster is nowhere to be seen and I do not want to use the disavow tool. Is there a way I can use code to our htaccess file or any other method? Would appreciate anyone's immediate response. Kind Regards
Technical SEO | | artdivision0 -
Can anyone show me a good example of Microdata for a site
Hi, i am just learning about microdata after being told that it would be a good idea to have this for my site www.in2town.co.uk as i understand it, if i put this in, then it will allow google to understand more about my page I have been reading about it here https://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=99170 and would like to know if anyone is using it and if it is making a difference, also can anyone show me some good examples on a working website please i work in joomla so as i understand it, i would have to put this in each page to help google understand more about the page and its content any help would be great.
Technical SEO | | ClaireH-1848860 -
Bad link profile?
Hi Mozzers! We have recently been handed this client due to the former SEO company building up a bad link profile, which resulted in the site dropping off the search results all together. Forcing them to get a new domain. This happened in July last year and we are unsure whether it would be wise to submit a reconsideration request and then 301 their old sites pages to the new domain. Basically I'm asking whether you can spot any spammy links being built in their profile. Here is the old domain: http://www.claimssolicitors.co.uk/ It would be great if you could help me out! 🙂 Thanks
Technical SEO | | Webrevolve0 -
SEOMoz is finding jpegs on my site and reporting them as pages with missing meta titles
SEOMoz has just done a crawl of my site, and found 600 pages with missing meta title errors. When I have checked the list of these pages, they are all jpegs and not pages. Why is SEOMoz reporting that this .jpg files have missing meta titles on my site, which is www.webmakercms.com? SEOMoz has run several crawls of my site and this is the first time it has brought up this list of jpegs as errors and I don't understand why?
Technical SEO | | mfrgolfgti1