Having problems resolving duplicate meta descriptions
-
Recently, I’ve recommended to the team running one of our websites that we remove duplicate meta descriptions. The site currently has a large number of these and we’d like to conform to SEO best practice. I’ve seen Matt Cutt’s recent video entitled, ‘Is it necessary for every page to have a meta description’, where he suggests that webmasters use meta descriptions for their most tactically important pages, but that it is better to have no meta description than duplicates. The website currently has one meta description that is duplicated across the entire site.
This seemed like a relatively straight forward suggestion but it is proving much more challenging to implement over a large website. The site’s developer has tried to resolve the meta descriptions, but says that the current meta description is a site wide value. It is possible to create 18 distinct replacements for 18 ‘template’ pages, but any sub-pages of these will inherit the value and create more duplicates. Would it be better to:
- Have no meta descriptions at all across the site?
- Stick with the status quo and have one meta description site-wide?
- Make 18 separate meta descriptions for the 18 most important pages, but still have 18 sets of duplicates across the sub-pages of the site.
Or…is there a solution to this problem which would allow us to follow the best practice in Matt’s video?
Any help would be much appreciated!
-
That sounds like an interesting suggestion and definitely something to look into, thank you. Sadly, the developer for the site is on holiday until next Monday, so I won't be to get an answer until next week.
Theoretically, if the changes were not possible, would it be better to have one single meta description on the home page and none across the rest of the site? Or would it be better to leave the site as it is?
-
I think your best option is to build out your CMS to add values for meta descriptions for each page. You should be able to have your developer build your CMS so that you can inject a meta description value for the page you are working on. This is pretty standard for in-house/WordPress/Drupal.
If your meta description is a site wide value, then the developer has just put one value into the header that loads for every page. You need to be able to customize this as a best practice, as you know. Building 18 template pages is more work than modifying the CMS to inject a meta value, so I wouldn't recommend it.
Is this an option for you?
-
If it is an in-house CMS I see no reason why you can't make your developer do the work to get it exactly how you want it. Otherwise, what's the bloody point in having a bespoke CMS?
Devs will nearly always say things aren't possible when they are. It's a constant battle. I know because I've battled it before.
I should say that I am not involved in this battle currently - our current dev is incredibly accommodating and just does everything I ask - believe me its a breath of fresh air and makes a massive difference. I have a situation where stuff our old dev said was impossible have suddenly become so!
-
Hi there, thanks for the reply. We are using an in-house CMS.
-
What kind of CMS are you using? Is it an in-house one or Wordpress/Drupal/etc.?
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
-
What to do about new meta description character limit?
Hey Everyone, So as I'm sure everyone has heard the new meta description limits have been increased and I have been going back and forth with whether or not to update my descriptions for my client's websites. I know that Google is now dynamically generating descriptions based off of content, but is it still beneficial to write longer descriptions as well? Will Google display my longer description now if it is ranking well? Rand Fishkin at Moz and others say that you should and other people, including Danny Sullivan, have said you shouldn't worry about it and leave them at between 150-160. My questions is what should I do? I will be focusing heavily on making sure the site's content is very targeted and relevant for when Google dynamically generates the descriptions, but should I still edit my descriptions manually?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | kenturley2 -
WordPress Duplicate URLs?
On my site, there are two different category bases leading to the exact same page. My developer claims that this is a common — and natural — occurrence when using WordPress, and that there's not a duplicate content issue to worry about. Is this true? Here's an example of the correct url. and... Here's an example of the same exact content, but using a different url. Notice that one is coming from /topics and the other is coming from /authors base. My understanding is that this is bad. Am I wrong?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | JasonMOZ1 -
Meta refresh
What does this mean? That isn’t an address on the website (fdmgroup.com)?All I can think of is that there may be some email address incorrectly entered on the blog somewhere – but it’s not a meta-refreshLooking at the referring page http://www.fdmgroup.com/fdm-group-speaks-out-against-the-revelation-that-one-in-four-graduates-fail-to-find-work/ - a blog entry from 2011 – it seems someone’s tried to attach google tracking code to the email address?Thanks in advance.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | fdmgroup0 -
Problem with description on Google search results.
A few months ago I changed the description of one of the pages on my site.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Tiedemann_Anselm
And I noticed that Google does not display the entire description of his search results. Description page is: "Get yourself a personalized name necklace, we offer a huge range of silver, gold and gold plated name necklaces." And Google only shows this line: "Get yourself a personalized name necklace, we offer a huge ... " Did someone have an idea why is that? 2EPSLGX.png0 -
Duplicate Content Question
Brief question - SEOMOZ is teling me that i have duplicate content on the following two pages http://www.passportsandvisas.com/visas/ and http://www.passportsandvisas.com/visas/index.asp The default page for the /visas/ directory is index.asp - so it effectively the same page - but apparently SEOMOZ and more importantly Google, etc treat these as two different pages. I read about 301 redirects etc, but in this case there aren't two physical HTML pages - so how do I fix this?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | santiago230 -
Virtual Domains and Duplicate Content
So I work for an organization that uses virtual domains. Basically, we have all our sites on one domain and then these sites can also be shown at a different URL. Example: sub.agencysite.com/store sub.brandsite.com/store Now the problem comes up often when we move the site to a brand's URL versus hosting the site on our URL, we end up with duplicate content. Now for god knows what damn reason, I currently cannot get my dev team to implement 301's but they will implement 302's. (Dont ask) I also am left with not being able to change the robots.txt file for our site. They say if we allowed people to go in a change this stuff it would be too messy and somebody would accidentally block a site that was not supposed to be blocked on our domain. (We are apparently incapable toddlers) Now I have an old site, sub.agencysite.com/store ranking for my terms while the new site is not showing up. So I am left with this question: If I want to get the new site ranking what is the best methodology? I am thinking of doing a 1:1 mapping of all pages and set up 302 redirects from the old to the new and then making the canonical tags on the old to reflect the new. My only thing here is how will Google actually view this setup? I mean on one hand I am saying
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | DRSearchEngOpt
"Hey, Googs, this is just a temp thing." and on the other I am saying "Hey, Googs, give all the weight to this page, got it? Graci!" So with my limited abilities, can anybody provide me a best case scenario?0 -
Robots.txt 404 problem
I've just set up a wordpress site with a hosting company who only allow you to install your wordpress site in http://www.myurl.com/folder as opposed to the root folder. I now have the problem that the robots.txt file only works in http://www.myurl./com/folder/robots.txt Of course google is looking for it at http://www.myurl.com/robots.txt and returning a 404 error. How can I get around this? Is there a way to tell google in webmaster tools to use a different path to locate it? I'm stumped?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | SamCUK0 -
Subdomains - duplicate content - robots.txt
Our corporate site provides MLS data to users, with the end goal of generating leads. Each registered lead is assigned to an agent, essentially in a round robin fashion. However we also give each agent a domain of their choosing that points to our corporate website. The domain can be whatever they want, but upon loading it is immediately directed to a subdomain. For example, www.agentsmith.com would be redirected to agentsmith.corporatedomain.com. Finally, any leads generated from agentsmith.easystreetrealty-indy.com are always assigned to Agent Smith instead of the agent pool (by parsing the current host name). In order to avoid being penalized for duplicate content, any page that is viewed on one of the agent subdomains always has a canonical link pointing to the corporate host name (www.corporatedomain.com). The only content difference between our corporate site and an agent subdomain is the phone number and contact email address where applicable. Two questions: Can/should we use robots.txt or robot meta tags to tell crawlers to ignore these subdomains, but obviously not the corporate domain? If question 1 is yes, would it be better for SEO to do that, or leave it how it is?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | EasyStreet0