Are correcting missing meta descrption tags a good use of time?
-
My modest website (shew-design.com) has pulled up nearly sixty crawl errors. Almost all of them are missing meta description tags. One friend who knows SEO better than me says that adding meta tags to EVERY page is not a good use of time. My site is available at shew-design.com
I'm just getting started in being serious about applying SEO to our site and I want to make sure I'm making the best use of my time.
The other error I'm getting are duplicate page names within different directories (e.g. getting started (for branding), getting started (for web). Is this a huge priority?
Would welcome your feedback.
-
It does. Thanks very much, Jared!
-
I'll give a two pronged answer: practical for your situation, and best practices.
Practical - No, it's not a huge priority, especially since you're just starting to get serious. It might be wise in your situation to focus on the other high impact changes that can be made in a short amount of time. The meta descriptions themselves don't help increase a shred of rank.
Best practice - Yes, you should definitely plan some time to fix these. Meta descriptions can be a powerful force for increasing click through rate from search results. So while there's not a direct SEO benefit, there's certainly enough reason to make time (eventually) to get all your meta descriptions in tip-top shape.
Hope that helps Eric!
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
-
Should we set up redirects for all deleted TAGS?
We recently found our site had 65,000 tags (yes 65K). In an effort to consolidate these we've started deleting them. MOZ is now reporting a heap of 404 errors for tag pages. These tag pages should not have links to them so not sure how come they're being crawled. Any suggestions from experience in this area would be useful.
Technical SEO | | wearehappymedia0 -
Which url should i use? Thanks!
I have a question regarding how to use my url, we are a Swedish-based website which have the url, http://interimslösning.se/ (that contains the Swedish letter “ö”) so the url can also be written as http://xn--interimslsning-3pb.se/. Which of the following url should I use for my backlinks, http://interimslösning.se/ or http://xn--interimslsning-3pb.se/ ? What is the difference between them regarding SEO? And is it good or bad to use letter like "ö" or other characters like that in your url? I was thinking that maybe it is good to use the letter "ö" for local search optimization in sweden, but i don't know.. Thanks in advance! Greetings,
Technical SEO | | Kiwibananlime
Paul Linderoth0 -
Canonical tag refers to itself (???)
Greetings Mozzers. I have seen a couple of pages that use canonical tags in a peculiar way, and I wanted to know if this way of using the tags was correct, harmless or dangerous: What I've seen is that on some pages like: www.example.com/page1 There's a canonical tag in the header that looks like this link href="http://ww.example.com/page1" rel="canonical" It looks as though the tag is "redirecting to itself", this seems useless (at least to me). Is there a case where this is actually a recommended practice? Will using the canonical tag in this way "hurt" the page's ranking potential? Cheers Jorge
Technical SEO | | Masoko-T0 -
Do I need both canonical meta tags AND 301 redirects?
I implemented a 301 redirect set to the "www" version in the .htaccess (apache server) file and my logs are DOWN 30-40%! I have to be doing something wrong! AddType application/x-httpd-php .html .htm RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^luckygemstones.com
Technical SEO | | spkcp111
RewriteRule (.*) http://www.luckygemstones.com/$1 [R=301,L] RewriteCond %{THE_REQUEST} ^./index.htm
RewriteRule ^(.)index.htm$ http://www.luckygemstones.com/$1 [R=301,L] IndexIgnore *
ErrorDocument 404 http://www.luckygemstones.com/page-not-found.htm
ErrorDocument 500 http://www.luckygemstones.com/internal-serv-error.htm
ErrorDocument 403 http://www.luckygemstones.com/forbidden-request.htm
ErrorDocument 401 http://www.luckygemstones.com/not-authorized.htm I've also started adding canoncial META's to EACH page: I'm using HMTL 4.0 loose still--1000's of pages--painful to convert to HTML5 so I left the / off the tag so it would validate. Am I doing something wrong? Thanks, Kathleen0 -
How are meta tags added once campaign has been set-up?
Once a campaign has been set-up in SEOmoz how can additional meta tags be added? I have not found a simple method to making this happen. Please advise.
Technical SEO | | ScottClark350 -
Google indexing tags help
Hey everyone, So yesterday someone pointed out to me that Google is indexing tags and that will likely hurt search engine results. I just did a "site:thetechblock.com" and I notice that tags are still being pulled. http://d.pr/i/WmE6 Today, I went into my Yoast settings and checked "noindex,follow" tags in the Taxomomies settings. I just want to make sure what I'm doing is right. http://d.pr/i/zmbd Thanks guys
Technical SEO | | ttb0 -
How do you add a description to the Meta Description area to Tag Pages in Wordpress? This way I do not get the errors: "Missing Meta Description Tag" from SEOMoz Bot? Thanks!
I tried to add descriptions to my tags in Wordpress (well actually one to test), but I still keep getting the "Missing Meta Description Tag" error. Any suggestions on how to fix this in Wordpress? Thanks!
Technical SEO | | jhblogger0 -
I am wondering if I should use the Meta 'Cache" tag?
I am working on removing unnecessary meta tags that have little impact on SEO and I have read so many mixed reviews about using the Meta 'Cache' tag. I need to informative information on whether or not this tag should be used.
Technical SEO | | ImagetecLP0