Meta Tag Descriptions not being found in Moz Crawls
-
Hey guys,
I have been managing a few websites and have input them into Moz for crawl reports, etc.
For a while I have noticed that we were getting a gratuitous amount of errors when it came to the number of missing meta tags. It was numbering in the 200's. The sites were in place before I got here and a lot of the older posts no one had even attempted to include tags, links of the page or anything.
As they are all Wordpress Sites and they all already had the Yoast/Wordpress SEO plug-in installed on them, I decided I would go through each post and media file one at a time and update their meta tags via the plug in. I personally did this so I know that I added and saved each one, however the Moz crawl reports continue to show that we are missing roughly 200 meta tags. I've seen a huge drop off in 404 errors and stuff since I went through and double checked everything on the sites, however the meta tag errors persist.
Is this the case that Moz is not recognizing the tags when it crawls because I used the Yoast Plugin? Or would you say that the plugin is the issue and I should find another way to add meta tags to the pages and posts on the site? My main concern is that if Moz is having issues crawling the sites, is Google also seeing the same thing?
The URLS include:
sundancevacationsblog.com
sundancevacationsnews.com
sundancevacationscharities.comAny help would be appreciated!
-
Glad to hear it got resolved so quickly! Keep up the good job!
-
Great that you have it fixed! (Did you look in the Yoast settings to see if different post types have different settings? That could be part of your original problem...)
-
I have implemented a few changes on the site, including that of adding another plugin to add meta tags. As it appears, for some reason the Yoast plugin was adding a meta description for articles and posts, however it never included authors or page descriptions. Weird.
The page was re-crawled today and all of the Meta Tag errors are gone! Hooray! Now I just need to work on the super long titles that the writers before me used.
Thanks for the help to all the took the time to post!
-
You are correct, after doing some more looking around I have found the same things. Some of the pages have meta descriptions and some don't. It seems that Yoast is doing it's job, however I added a different plugin to help add some additional tags. That has also seemed to help, but again has not totally fixed the issue.
Clearly I am going to have to delve deeper into this as I have already taken a day up looking at it. I will edit a few more things and then re-crawl and see what I come up with. I'll post the results here as well.
-
Looking at the first one with Screaming Frog, there are 112 pages without descriptions.
Visually checking an example of those, http://sundancevacationsnews.com/, I see in the description, an empty description.
Checking one with a description: https://sundancevacationsblog.com/sundance-vacations-travel-advice/international/, I see
It just looks like some of them didn’t have descriptions added. Check back in Yoast again and look at the pages that Moz says have no description. Does anything look different in those than in the ones that do have descriptions?
I don't think the problem is the plug-in since both the pages with and without the descriptions are using it, and yes, Google will see the same thing.
-
Hi Jackie,
What I'd advise you to do, is to create a Screaming Frog Crawl so you can compare the two crawl data. If both show missing meta descriptions on the same pages, then there might be something on your side.
It is always good to double-check the information you are provided. So you are sure that the issue isn't a bug.
Gr., Keszi
P.S. I made a quick crawl with Screaming Frog on the first domain: sundancevacationsblog.com and found quite a big number of Missing Meta Titles.
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
-
Could my Crawl Error Report be wrong?
HI there, I am using Yoast SEO plugin on a wordpress website. I am currently showing 70 Med priority crawl errors 'missing meta description' on my Moz pro account. This number of missing meta descriptions has increased over the last 6 weeks. But every single page / post / tag / category has both the title and meta description completed via Yoast. I requested a google bot to crawl the site a few weeks ago as thought it perhaps wasn't been crawled and updated. Any idea what the issue might be? Could the Moz report be incorrect for some reason? Or could something be blocking Moz / Google from seeing the Yoast plugin?
Moz Pro | | skehoe0 -
Is it normal for Moz to report on nofollow pages in crawl diagnostics?
I have a dev version of my website, for example, devwww.website.com. The htaccess page has a noindex and nofollow request, but I got crawl issues reported from these pages in my Moz report. Does this mean that I don't have the development site hidden from search like I thought I did?
Moz Pro | | houstonbrooke0 -
How do retrieve historical traffic data in Moz?
I need to find traffic data from the start of my campaign in Moz, how do I do that? thanks!
Moz Pro | | ChristieC0 -
What do the dates refer to in seo moz reports
question is in the title - new trainee asked me and couldn't actually answer!
Moz Pro | | Highlandgael0 -
When will be the 250 pages crawled limit eliminated?
Hi, I signed up yesterday for a SEOMoz Pro Account, and would like to know, please, when will be the 250 pages crawled limit eliminated? 🙂 Thanks in advance for your help!
Moz Pro | | Andarilho0 -
Moz points a difference in totals
I am not quite sure why this is happening but the Moz point s total on my logo when I hover over it is around 6 times more than the one on my main section. Can someone explain why ? Screen-Shot-2011-11-23-at-01.21.22.png
Moz Pro | | onlinemediadirect0 -
How to get seomoz to re-crawl a site?
I had a lot of duplicate content issues and have fixed all the other warnings. I want to check the site again.
Moz Pro | | adamzski0