Meta descriptions better empty or with duplicate content?
-
I am working with a yahoo store. Somehow all of the meta description fields were filled in with random content from throughout the store.
For example, a black cabinet knob product page might have in its description field the specifications for a drawer slide. I don't know how this happened. We have had a programmer auto populate certain fields to get them ready for product feeds, etc. It's possible they screwed something up during that, this was a long time ago.
My question. Regardless of how it happened. Is it better for me to have them wipe these fields entirely clean? Or, is it better for me to have them populate the fields with a duplicate of our text from the body.
The site has about 6,500 pages so I have and will make custom descriptions for the more important pages after this process, but the workload to do them all is too much. So, nothing or duplicate content for the pages that likely won't receive personal attention?
-
Thanks, you were a big help. I'll do the A/B you are talking about.
I am thinking at this point I'll probably go with the body text. The site I'm talking about has well written text as the body of most pages. And, as I said, I'll be writing custom descriptions for the most important pages.
-
To be more specific, if you have good body text, Google/Bing can pull that into the SERPs if there is no meta description. That shortens your efforts. What I'm saying is, A/B test a page with Fetch or some other headless browser tool to see what the SERP is like without Meta description. I'm sure you've seen cruddy SERP results with Alt-text or code or unpronouncable characters: that's a coding issue. In many cases the result will be the H1 text, or the first sentence of the body.
As for what Luke said, yes, if bots aren't pulling good text into that space, a dynamic programmatically generated meta can work. It depends on goals. The downsides are that it can lose you a click if the searcher doesn't like what they see, as in, if the CTA or hook is ineffective. With body text they might give you the benefit of the doubt.
-
Thanks for the response.
I understand what you are saying. It sounds to me like you think (as Luke does below) that if duplicating the body text (which is good quality) will work then that's the best way to go?
What about Luke's suggestion of using dynamic text? Do you think dynamic text could be better than quality body text? I've never worked with any dynamic text. Are what are the downsides?
I'll investigate the questions you posed as well.
-
Thanks, we are thinking along the same lines here. The text from our body will 95% of the time be of good quality for a description, so it might work just fine.
I didn't think about creating dynamic text. Good idea. This might be the best middle ground for all the pages I don't plan to give personal attention.
Looks like I have a couple options to consider.
-
I think this depends a lot on what the text of the body looks like. If in general, the first couple of lines of the body is a good introduction that would inspire someone to click on the search result, then that would be a fine way to go. Otherwise you may want to trust Google. They do a pretty good job of selecting some relevant text for you.
If all of these are product pages, another option may be to dynamically create a generic yet enticing first sentence that the name of the product could be inserted in to and follow it with the first line from the body. So something like "Our <insert product="" name="">is the greatest thing since sliced bread. <insert custom="" text="" from="" the="" body="" to="" fill="" rest="">". So you would yield results like "Our door slide is the greatest thing since sliced bread...." and "Our black cabinet knob is the greatest thing since sliced bread....".</insert></insert>
Note my choice of initial phrase was more for comic relief. I would especially avoid that if the store also sells sliced bread
-
Whew, that is a tough one. IMHO, you are better off with a useful Meta description--one that is accurate to what the SITE is about--than none, IF there's a risk that bots will pull something other than useful text (like the social button or image alt text). Just think how the SERPs would look if only Title is visible, or a mess.
But, better with none, and let the bots pull in their own, than an inaccurate one (what you have now).
Have you talked to a dev about a dynamic and programmatic way to make unique meta descriptions for these 6500 pages? What kind of result do you get if you delete the meta description? Can you use a testing tool to fetch the site without meta description, just to see what searchers will see? If it's not bad and is more useful than a sitewide duplicate, just blank the majority out,
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
-
Duplicate Content - But it isn't!
Hi All, I have a site that releases alerts for particular problem/events/happenings. Due to legal stuff we keep the majority of the content the same on each of these event pages. The URLs are all different but it keeps coming back as duplicate content. The canonical tag is not right (i dont think for this) egs http://www.holidaytravelwatch.com/alerts/call-to-arms/egypt/coral-sea-waterworld-resort-sharm-el-sheikh-egypt-holiday-complaints-july-2014 http://www.holidaytravelwatch.com/alerts/call-to-arms/egypt/hotel-concorde-el-salam-sharm-el-sheikh-egypt-holiday-complaints-may-2014
On-Page Optimization | | Astute-Media0 -
Meta description for Privacy Policy?
Hello guys, Quick question about optimizing other pages on my woocommerce e-commerce store. Do I need to optimize pages like the cart page, checkout page, privacy policy, return policy, shipping policy, etc? Strictly talking about on page SEO for these pages, like meta titles, description. Thanks!
On-Page Optimization | | The_Kiwi_Man0 -
Moz showing 384 description duplicates on my ecommerce store.... when I download CSV, most pages are coming from my WordPress Blog, why?
Hi, I am trying to investigate why I am getting 384 description duplicates on my ecommerce store (www.doggie-diva.com)? When I download the CSV file from MOZ, the majority of the pages they refer to are pages from my Word Press blog, which is hosted on a different server (blog.doggie-diva.com). I do have a link from my website to my Word Press blog and vice versa. Can you please explain to me why this is happening when I don't have duplicate content? Example of a page flagged from www.doggie-diva.com with duplicate content (http://blog.doggie-diva.com/tag/dog-gymnastics. Thanks, Rachel <colgroup><col width="549"></colgroup>
On-Page Optimization | | doggiedivalicious
| |0 -
Duplicate content from pagination and categories found in multiple locations
Hey Moz community, Really need help resolving duplicate content issues for an eCommerce utilizing Magento. We have duplicate content issues with category pagination and categories found in multiple locations. here's an example: "www.website.com/style/sequin-dresses" is also found at "www.website.com/features/sequin-dresses" *to resolve this issue do we just need to place a canonical tag on "www.website.com/features/sequin-dresses" pointing to "www.website.com/style/sequin-dresses"? In addition, the category "Sequin Dresses" also has pagination. to resolve duplicate content issues with pagination do we need to implement a rel=next/prev tag? (we do not have a view-all due to the amount of products featured) If anyone has experience with this or any insights on how to resolve these issues please let me know. Thanks!
On-Page Optimization | | LeapOfBelief0 -
Duplicate content on events site
I have an event website and for every day the event occurs the event has a page. For example: The Oktoberfest in Germany the event takes 16 days. My site would have 16 (almost)identical pages about the Oktoberfest(same text, adres, photos, contact info). The only difference between the pages is the date mentioned on the page. I use rich snippets. How does google treat my pages and what is the best practice.
On-Page Optimization | | dragonflo0 -
Duplicate content "/"
Hi all, Ran my website through the SEOMOZ campaigns and the crawl diagnostics give me a duplicate error for these urls http://www.mysite.com/cat1/article http://www.mysite.com/cat1/article/ so the url with the "/" is a duplicate of the one without the "/" Can someone point me out to a solution to solve this ? regards, Frederik
On-Page Optimization | | frdrik1230 -
To enter keyword meta tags or to not enter keyword meta tags?
I've been doing SEO for awhile, but new to SEOMoz. I'm surprised that SEOMoz does not recommend keyword meta tags. I didn't enter them for the longest time because I know Google doesn't care about them. However, I did read that other search engines DO use them. And therefore that is why you should have them. I teach my customers about SEO, and I know it would be much easier for them not to enter or worry about the keyword meta tags. However, I would love to hear opinions here. And to Bing/Yahoo put any weight into them or is it only really small search engines? Thanks! Hilary
On-Page Optimization | | endlessrange0 -
Is is it true that Google will not penalize duplicated content found in UL and LI tags?
I've read in a few places now that if you absolutely have to use a key term several times in a piece of copy, then it is preferable to use li and ul tags, as google will not penalise excessive density of keywords found in these tags. Does anyone know if there is any truth in this?
On-Page Optimization | | jdjamie0