Meta Descriptions
-
Hi All,
Just a quick question regarding Meta Descriptions, I am currently looking at a site where an awful lot of the Meta descriptions are similar (not 100% duplicated). The reason being is that the site contains a lot of the same products, but different weights. For example a 500g, 1kg & 2kg version of the same product. Therefore the Metas are same, apart from the weight that's being discussed.
In my opinion the duplication is probably a little too close. Do you think in this circumstance its better to have no Meta descriptions defined at all?
Thanks!
-
I understand what you mean, but let me explain.
For small to medium size stores, this method makes more sense. Why?
1. Easier to add rich snippet markup on pages, due to lower product count
2. Can optimize pages around main keyword, rather than hyper-specific keyword. Example:
"custom t-shirt printing" would be more desirable and have more searches than "red t-shirt printing"
3. If the store has enough products or options, the store will not look thin, and also be vastly easier to navigate.
4. You will be able to spend more time optimizing around your higher level keywords. Example:
"men's collared shirts" rather than "mens black collared shirts". You can include both content and meta data for the individual details.Sample meta: Yourshirtdomain.com is the number one supplier of men's collared shirts in the midwest region. 'different varaitions here'
For some very large sites, they set the sub-pages to no-index and allow the leading page to get them into the store. It's all a matter of how his site is set up, as to what will work best for him and his client.
-
That is a good option but the issue with it is that it makes your site look too thin.
If a user clicks on a brand, they will see 1 product rather than say 10. The 1 product may say 10 colours but I think people with tend to say "ah they dont have much on there".
Also for a small store (compared to the big boys), the ability to rank on colours is key.
My Red T-Shirt can rank and so can my Blue T-Shirt. Rather than my 1 product being T-Shirt - Various Colours or something like that.
I think its only the major players or well established stores who can get away with the 1 product with 10 colour options in.
-
Thanks guys, appreciated.
-
If it's possible, can you combine the products with variables into on page? Using the store's cart and checkout function, I would include a gallery of all the different colors/options, then have the selected options available through a dropdown menu. This way you have one page for a product, with selectable options rather than a large number of pages based around one thing. This may also help with on-page user time as well, since they will sort through the options to find what they are wanting.
-
Fully agree with YNWA and the above article.
When you consider that a meta description has a very small (if measurable at all) influence on your SEO performance nowadays, anything that could potentially be harmful or spammy should be removed.
Your MD is now a shop window - use it to include content that will attract people to your site, are you a local business, your phone number, free delivery, summer sale and so on. If you have a page on your site that you're not actively trying to promote or use to bring people in, I see no problem at all at having a blank MD and letting Google generate one for you.
-
I am in the same boat with an ecommerce store.
Same products but different colours.
I tend to write my own metas but mix it up a bit with colour, fit, size, material, where it is made, free delivery, official stockists etc...
-
Thanks for this.
I have had a look through this before and I suppose the reason I asked the original question was because I consider the Metas to be very similar and not quite duplicated. So its a big of a grey area.
As there is doubt, I think I will remove all Metas for now.
-
Here is a good article and read the comments. Interesting.
http://searchengineland.com/googles-matt-cutts-dont-duplicate-your-meta-descriptions-177706
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 To Change Descriptions On Category Page 2 / 3 etc
I have a quick question that I hope someone might be able to help me with. On a wordpress website I have a lot of posts in each category. My problem is there are now several category pages. ie: https://www.mywebsite.com/category/cat-name/ https://www.mywebsite.com/category/cat-name/page2 https://www.mywebsite.com/category/cat-name/page3 The problem is on the category page I can set page title / description etc. But the problem is I cant do that on page2 / page 3 etc. Does anyone know how I can change the titles and decriptions etc on those pages. Thanks
Technical SEO | | DaleZon0 -
Is My Boilerplate Product Description Causing Duplicate Content Issues?
I have an e-commerce store with 20,000+ one-of-a-kind products. We only have one of each product, and once a product is sold we will never restock it. So I really have no intention to have these product pages showing up in SERPs. Each product has a boilerplate description that the product's unique attributes (style, color, size) are plugged into. But a few sentences of the description are exactly the same across all products. Google Webmaster Tools doesn't report any duplicate content. My Moz Crawl Report show 29 of these products as having duplicate content. But a Google search using the site operator and some text from the boilerplate description turns up 16,400 product pages from my site. Could this duplicate content be hurting my SERPs for other pages on the site that I am trying to rank? As I said, I'm not concerned about ranking for these products pages. Should I make them "rel=canonical" to their respective product categories? Or use "noindex, follow" on every product? Or should I not worry about it?
Technical SEO | | znagle0 -
Does bing accept meta name="fragment" for AJAX crawling?
I have a case in which the whole site is AJAX, the method to appease to crawlers used is <meta< span="">name="fragment" content="!"> Which is the new HTML5 PushState that Bing said it supports (At least I think it is that) This approach works for Google, but Bing isn't showing anything. Does anyone know if Bing supports this and we have to alter something or if not is there a known work around? The only other logic we have is to recognize the bing user agent and redirect to the rendered page, but we were worried that could cause some kind of cloaking penalty</meta<>
Technical SEO | | MarloSchneider0 -
Crawl completed but still says meta description missing
Before the last crawl I went through and made sure all meta descriptions were not missing. However, from the last crawl on the 26th July, it still has the same pages on the list and showed they were crawled as well? Any ideas on why they may still be showing as missing?
Technical SEO | | HamiltonIsland0 -
Noindex meta tag
Hi When following Webmaster Tools/Optimization/HTML Improvements it says that we have duplicate title tags and duplicate meta descriptions for hundreds of pages, As corrective action we have added to those pages and also changed title tags to make sure that they are different but still Webmaster keeps reporting that the duplication exist. Is it possible that google bot doesn't see our noindex code while crawling? By the way our seomoz report says that there is no duplicate title tag or meta description on our site google has crawled our site today and we received our report from seomoz today thanks
Technical SEO | | iskq0 -
Auto generated meta description tag in Drupal
Was having issues on Drupal not autogenerating a meta description tag, but I think I have figured it out. Just to verify, would this piece of code be the meta description tag (reason I ask is b/c it looks a little different than the usual tag I have seen):
Technical SEO | | kevgrand0 -
Adding 'NoIndex Meta' to Prestashop Module & Search pages.
Hi Looking for a fix for the PrestaShop platform Look for the definitive answer on how to best stop the indexing of PrestaShop modules such as "send to a friend", "Best Sellers" and site search pages. We want to be able to add a meta noindex ()to pages ending in: /search?tag=ball&p=15 or /modules/sendtoafriend/sendtoafriend-form.php We already have in the robot text: Disallow: /search.php
Technical SEO | | reallyitsme
Disallow: /modules/ (Google seems to ignore these) But as a further tool we would like to incude the noindex to all these pages too to stop duplicated pages. I assume this needs to be in either the head.tpl or the .php file of each PrestaShop module.? Or is there a general site wide code fix to put in the metadata to apply' Noindex Meta' to certain files. Current meta code here: Please reply with where to add code and what the code should be. Thanks in advance.0 -
More products the same description but different properties
I am beginner in seo. I have development a website in prestashop. I have a problem: for more product i have the same description, but different properties: for example : http://www.icentrale.ro/45-centrale-termice-cu-tiraj-fortat-schimbator-secundar-ferroli-divatop-f-24.html and http://www.icentrale.ro/46-centrale-termice-cu-tiraj-fortat-schimbator-secundar-ferroli-divatop-f-32.html Only diffrent for this is the properties from table. Its posible to be penalized the google for duplicate content? A solution for this issue?
Technical SEO | | vilcu0