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
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
-
Site's meta description is not being shown in Google Search results. Instead our privacy policy is getting indexed.
We re-launched our new site and put in the re-directs. Our site is https://www.fico.com/en. When I search for "fico" in Google. I see the privacy policy getting indexed as meta descriptions instead of our actual meta description. I have edited the meta description, requested Google to re-index our site. Not sure what to do next? Thanks for your advise.
Technical SEO | | gosheen0 -
Are nofollow, noindex meta tags healthy for this particular situation?
Hi mozzers, I am conducting an audit for a client and found over 200 instances using meta tags(nofollow, noindex). These were implemented essentially on Blog pages/category pages, tags not blog posts which is a good sign. I believe that tagged URLs aren't something to worry about since these create tons of duplicates. In regards to the category page, i feel that it falls in the same basket as tags but I am not positive about it. Can someone tell me if these are fine to have noindex, nofollow? Also on the website subnav which are related to the category pages mentioned prev, the webmaster have implemented noindex,follow(screenshot below), which seems ok to me? am i right? Thanks 8egLLbo.png?1
Technical SEO | | Ideas-Money-Art0 -
Miss meta description on 404 page
Hi, My 404 page did not have meta description. Is it an error? Because I run report and seomoz said that a problem. Thanks!
Technical SEO | | JohnHuynh0 -
Empty Meta Robots Directive - Harmful?
Hi, We had a coding update and a side-effect of that was that our directive was emptied, in other words it now reads as: on all of the site. I've since noticed that Google's cache date on all of the pages - at least, the ones I tested - have a Cached date of no later than 17 December '12 - that's the Monday after the directive was removed on mass. So, A, does anyone have solid evidence of an empty directive causing problems? Past experience, Matt Cutts, Fishkin quote, etc. And then B - It seems fairly well correlated but, does my entire site's homogenous Cached date point to this tag removal? Or is it fairly normal to have a particular cache date across a large site (we're a large ecommerce site). Our site: http://www.zando.co.za/ I'm having the directive reinstated as soon as Dev permitting. And then, for extra credit, is there a way with Google's API, or perhaps some other tool, to run an arbitrary list and retrieve Cached dates? I'd want to do this for diagnosis purposes and preferably in a way that OK with Google. I'd avoid CURLing for the cached URL and scraping out that dates with BASH, or any such kind of thing. Cheers,
Technical SEO | | RocketZando0 -
Should I include A Description Tag for an article page
Hi, I am wondering if i should include a description tag for an article page where the news on that page will change around five times a day. I am not sure if to fill a description in for local news or to leave it blank so the search engines pick up the latest local news and then the next day they show the latest local news again in the search engines instead of having a static description of the news page. any help would be great
Technical SEO | | ClaireH-1848860 -
Long Meta Descriptions
I want to create a template for Meta titles, descriptions and keywords on my website for old news and minor pages in order to get some long tail traffic from them. The only template I can think to use for the descriptions takes the first sentence of the news article (which often if above 160 characters). Since these are minor pages, how big of a problem is that? Thanks!
Technical SEO | | theLotter0 -
Multiple title and description change is considered spam?
I'm changing title and description several times throught 1-2 months... will Google penalize me? I'm worried that testing several title and description ideas would affect the site rankings on google. Anyone had a problem with that... or can i continue testing as many titles and descriptions as i want?
Technical SEO | | mosaicpro0