I do not want all my META descriptions to be unique.
-
Hi,
I have maybe 20 categories (new) that I really like to have the same Meta description for all of them. The category names call out the use of their respective products. but, all of these categories are related to a much bigger global initiative.
I don't have enough space in the title to discuss the individual terms as well as the broader project, so I would like the META to say something like "Products related to <this thing="" my="" customers="" care="" about="">from</this>
However, I am extremely paranoid about adding 20-25 meta descriptions that are identical, because Google.
Am I overthinking this and being paranoid about Panguin and Penda?
-
Without going over what others have said, which I agree with, it seems each page features one product, right?
So instead of "Products related to <this thing="" my="" customers="" care="" about="">from <my incredibly="" impressive="" brand="" name="">"</my></this>
why not... " related to <this thing="" my="" customers="" care="" about="">from</this>
Which would make it unique. Just a thought.
-
I agree with Allen. I would add that if the content of those 20 pages is so similar that they all should have the same meta description that could be a really bad thing. Pages don't need to be verbatim identical to be considered duplicate content. Google can consider them duplicates for content that is substantially similar, even if every word on the page is different. Check out Eric Enge's interview with Matt Cutts on this subject: http://www.stonetemple.com/matt-cutts-and-eric-talk-about-what-makes-a-quality-site/
I am hoping that these pages are indeed, 20 unique pages. If so, Allen is absolutely right. Go after what's unique about each one of those pages and you'll gather a wider range of potential traffic. If they aren't really unique pages, you're just cannibalizing your content and in the end, not really helping your own cause.
-
Joe,
Your NOT being overly cautious, but I do think your not thinking outside the box. The box being your 1 Meta Description you are trying to use.
Think about it this way, you cant control your customer, and you cant control their mind, you cant control what they search for. So your perceived problem is actually an opportunity to have 20 ways to describe your 1 Meta description. If the meta description your going after is "Pet Products" the chance that 100% of you audience is going to be searching for that exact term is pretty slim. One customer may search for "Pet Shampoo" yet you want them a customer or at least the opportunity to sell them "Pet Products" as long as they are a vertical, you might sell them something else.
So in my opinion you actually have 20 opportunities to optimize those pages for different keywords and cast a wider net at capturing a customer for your website.
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
-
How do you make product pages unique when there are thousands of products?
When an ecommerce site has 200 product pages, this is fine. It's time consuming, but I can write 200 unique paragraphs describing the product and it's not an insane amount of work for one person. But when there are 10,000+ product pages... what is the best way for one person to go about this? Risk the page being thin and just bullet point a couple of "need-to-know" info bits, or take the time to prioritise what products could benefit the most from the unique content and get cracking with a paragraph for each? Or do you just forego having truly unique copy on each product page and just aim to optimise the category pages for the longtail? Just wondering how you guys deal with thousands of product pages really. Starting to feel as if I should re-evaluate my strategy and wanted to get some idea on what others are doing... Notes: Product pages already have reviews, helps with adding more unique user-generated content to each page. There's dynamic content e.g. "You may be interested in...", "Related products", etc.
On-Page Optimization | | Ria_3 -
Page Title (Meta descriptions) length... how strict are you?
I have just had a conversation with a client... the gist was this... Is it more important to stay under the 55-60 characters OR go over a bit and have the page title make sense and include the clients company name. The same argument for meta description. I have a client insisting on 55-60 length but the keywords are long and if we use the primary keyword phrase the length is 44 if we use the keyword phrase and add the company name it becomes 64. This is with us trimming it a bit. Anyone else discussed this before?
On-Page Optimization | | JohnW-UK1 -
Long Meta Titles on Dynamic Pages
What to do with long meta titles on press release pages. Unlike other pages on the site, press release pages have no physical value and are dynamically created picking data from the database. Such pages i notice are automatically picking the URL/H1 as meta title and meta description. How to shorten such meta titles and descriptions? Do such errors (related to dynamically created pages) matter? Tanveer
On-Page Optimization | | Sequelmed0 -
Meta name and other data on home page
I am in the process of building a new website with wordpress to replace my static HTML site but cannot find out where to place my meta data such as meta name (google verification etc) on the home page. Using Yoast SEO plugin and all I can find is place for title and meta description. Anyone have any experience with this SEO problem? thanks
On-Page Optimization | | casper4340 -
Blocked By Meta Robots
Hi I logged in the other day to find that over night I received 8347 notices saying certain pages are being kept out of the search engine indexes by meta-robots. I have not changed my robots.txt in years and I certainly didn't block Google from visiting those pages. Is this a fault on Roger Mozbot behalf? Or is there a bot preventing 8000+ pages being indexed? Is there a way to find out what meta-robot is doing this and where? And how I can get rid of it? I usually rank between #3 and #5 for the term 'sex toys' on google.com.au, but I now rank #7 to #9 so it would seem some of my pages/content is being blocked. My website is www.theloveshop.com THIS IS AN ADULT TOYS SITE. There is no porn videos or anything like that on it, but just in case you don't wish to look at sex toys or are around kids I thought I would mention it. Blake
On-Page Optimization | | wayne10 -
Campaign for pages that I want to optimize?
Go easy on my guys and gals. I'm brand new to the world of SEO and I'm a Realtor by trade, so this is all new to me, but exciting and fascinating at the same time. You might ask why I don't hire a company to do the SEO for me for my website at: www.DiscountRealEstateFees.com since I'm one of those Realtors who makes a ton of money every year. Unfortunately, that's not the case and some day when I've built my business to a point that I can relax and breathe easy, I will hire that company. Besides, by then, I'll be an SEO expert and be able to ride herd on them if they're not doing a good job! My question is: Should I create a campaign on SEOMoz.org for each page on my website that I want to optimize or are the campaigns supposed to be for individual websites only? Thanks for your help!
On-Page Optimization | | Assist-2-Sell0 -
Best meta tite - description writing tool
Hi I am in the process of writing meta titles and meta descriptions for a clients product portfolio. I have the complete list exported from the cms system in to excel. I know I can add some clever logic to build the meta information but for this purpose I want to do this manually. Does anyone have a editor online or an excel sheet that shows you the charactor limits when writing the titles and descriptions. This would be handy if someone has, otherwise it's a case of having to write the excel sheet to do this, not that hard to do but i thought i'd ask the question.
On-Page Optimization | | seohive-2227200