Meta descriptions better empty or with duplicate content?
-
I am working with a yahoo store. Somehow all of the meta description fields were filled in with random content from throughout the store.
For example, a black cabinet knob product page might have in its description field the specifications for a drawer slide. I don't know how this happened. We have had a programmer auto populate certain fields to get them ready for product feeds, etc. It's possible they screwed something up during that, this was a long time ago.
My question. Regardless of how it happened. Is it better for me to have them wipe these fields entirely clean? Or, is it better for me to have them populate the fields with a duplicate of our text from the body.
The site has about 6,500 pages so I have and will make custom descriptions for the more important pages after this process, but the workload to do them all is too much. So, nothing or duplicate content for the pages that likely won't receive personal attention?
-
Thanks, you were a big help. I'll do the A/B you are talking about.
I am thinking at this point I'll probably go with the body text. The site I'm talking about has well written text as the body of most pages. And, as I said, I'll be writing custom descriptions for the most important pages.
-
To be more specific, if you have good body text, Google/Bing can pull that into the SERPs if there is no meta description. That shortens your efforts. What I'm saying is, A/B test a page with Fetch or some other headless browser tool to see what the SERP is like without Meta description. I'm sure you've seen cruddy SERP results with Alt-text or code or unpronouncable characters: that's a coding issue. In many cases the result will be the H1 text, or the first sentence of the body.
As for what Luke said, yes, if bots aren't pulling good text into that space, a dynamic programmatically generated meta can work. It depends on goals. The downsides are that it can lose you a click if the searcher doesn't like what they see, as in, if the CTA or hook is ineffective. With body text they might give you the benefit of the doubt.
-
Thanks for the response.
I understand what you are saying. It sounds to me like you think (as Luke does below) that if duplicating the body text (which is good quality) will work then that's the best way to go?
What about Luke's suggestion of using dynamic text? Do you think dynamic text could be better than quality body text? I've never worked with any dynamic text. Are what are the downsides?
I'll investigate the questions you posed as well.
-
Thanks, we are thinking along the same lines here. The text from our body will 95% of the time be of good quality for a description, so it might work just fine.
I didn't think about creating dynamic text. Good idea. This might be the best middle ground for all the pages I don't plan to give personal attention.
Looks like I have a couple options to consider.
-
I think this depends a lot on what the text of the body looks like. If in general, the first couple of lines of the body is a good introduction that would inspire someone to click on the search result, then that would be a fine way to go. Otherwise you may want to trust Google. They do a pretty good job of selecting some relevant text for you.
If all of these are product pages, another option may be to dynamically create a generic yet enticing first sentence that the name of the product could be inserted in to and follow it with the first line from the body. So something like "Our <insert product="" name="">is the greatest thing since sliced bread. <insert custom="" text="" from="" the="" body="" to="" fill="" rest="">". So you would yield results like "Our door slide is the greatest thing since sliced bread...." and "Our black cabinet knob is the greatest thing since sliced bread....".</insert></insert>
Note my choice of initial phrase was more for comic relief. I would especially avoid that if the store also sells sliced bread
-
Whew, that is a tough one. IMHO, you are better off with a useful Meta description--one that is accurate to what the SITE is about--than none, IF there's a risk that bots will pull something other than useful text (like the social button or image alt text). Just think how the SERPs would look if only Title is visible, or a mess.
But, better with none, and let the bots pull in their own, than an inaccurate one (what you have now).
Have you talked to a dev about a dynamic and programmatic way to make unique meta descriptions for these 6500 pages? What kind of result do you get if you delete the meta description? Can you use a testing tool to fetch the site without meta description, just to see what searchers will see? If it's not bad and is more useful than a sitewide duplicate, just blank the majority out,
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
-
Dynamic links & duplicate content
Hi there, I am putting a proposal together for a client whose website has been optimised to include many dynamic links and so there are many pages with duplicate content: only the page title, h1 and URL is different. My client thinks this isn't an issue. What is the current consensus on this? Many thanks in advance.
On-Page Optimization | | lorraine.mcconechy0 -
Suggestions on dealing with duplicate content?
What are the best ways to protect / deal with duplicate content? I've added an example scenario, Nike Trainer model 1 – has an overview page that also links to a sub-page about cushioning, one about Gore-Tex and one about breathability. Nike Trainer model 2,3,4,5 – have an overview page that also links to sub-pages page about cushioning , Gore-Tex and breathability. In each of the sub-pages the URL is a child of the parent so a distinct page from each other e.g. /nike-trainer/model-1/gore-tex /nike-trainer/model-2/gore-tex. There is some differences in material composition, some different images and of course the product name is referred multiple times. This makes the page in the region of 80% unique. Any suggestions welcome about the above example or any other ways you guys know of dealing with duplicate content.
On-Page Optimization | | punchseo0 -
How unique should a meta description be?
I'm working on a large website (circa 25k pages) that presently just replicates each page title as a meta description. I'm thinking of doing a 'find and replace' in the database so I change: to where the preceeding and following text would be the same in each case eg Is this unique enough? Obviously the individual keyword would make it technically unique each time....and manually changing them would take the rest of my life 🙂
On-Page Optimization | | abisti20 -
Meta Refresh
Hi, This forum has proved to be quite active and useful for me. Can any body help me about "Meta Refresh" that Moz weekly report shows as error. My site is not that which needs daily basis or say hourly basis update. We change the content but not daily. Should i address this issue or just ignore it. what impact does it may have if i ignore it. Thanks, Tanveer
On-Page Optimization | | Sequelmed0 -
Which meta descriptions should I fix first?
Our biggest issue with SEO right now is the lack of meta descriptions. There are a ton of pages that require meta descriptions that we don't know which ones to prioritize first, namely: corporate website pages landing pages for specific content offers that are gated behind a form blog posts Since we can't tackle everything at once, what's best practice around which pages to fix first? Thanks!
On-Page Optimization | | BizoMarketing0 -
Index.php getting Duplicate page content.
I am quite new to SEO and have now got my first results. I am getting all my index.php pages returned as Duplicate page content. ie: blue-widgets/index.php
On-Page Optimization | | ivoryred
blue-widgets/ green-widgets/large/index.php
green-widgets/large/ How do solve this issue?0 -
How to avoid duplicate page content
I have over 5.000 duplicate page content because my urls contains ?district=1&sort=&how=ASC¤cy=EUR. How can I fix this?
On-Page Optimization | | bruki0 -
How to SEO a website that is being help back by duplicate content?
We have over 20 websites that sell property. Each website is targeted to a different country. People advertise to sell their property. The websites are not getting to page 1 for the terms we want probably because of duplication issues. If we compare one website with another country website on www.duplicatecontent.net we find it is nearly 70% between one and the other. So we trying to understand why this is. If someone wanted to sell a property in Spain we would create an advert for them but rather than putting this on the back-end of the Spain website it goes on a separate website that does on all countries. We have tried to put nofollow tags so that the country specific website gets acknowledgement of being the original website but the rankings for key-terms will not rise and the duplication % remains nearly 70%. Can anyone suggest the best way forward?
On-Page Optimization | | Feily0