Can Page Content & Description Have Same Content?
-
I'm studying my crawl report and there are several warnings regarding missing meta descriptions.
My website is built in WordPress and part of the site is a blog.
Several of these missing description warnings are regarding blog posts and I was wondering if I am able to copy the first few lines of content of each of the posts to put in the meta description, or would that be considered duplicate content?
Also, there are a few warnings that relate to blog index pages, e.g. http://www.iainmoran.com/2013/02/ - I don't know if I can even add a description of these as I think they are dynamically created?
While on the subject of duplicate content, if I had a sidebar with information on several of the pages (same info) while the content would be coming from a WP Widget, would this still be considered duplicate content and would Google penalise me for it?
Would really appreciate some thoughts on this,please.
Thanks,
Iain.
-
Thanks, Tom - I'll have a go at that and make an actual robots.txt file and upload it.
It is odd though and when I was creating my WP pages there are Yoast Options for each page - several of them I set to noindex, though looking at the virtual robots.txt, these isn't the case. My file just has:
User-agent: *
Disallow: /wp-admin/
Disallow: /wp-includes/Thanks again for all your help,
Iain.
-
http://wordpress.org/support/topic/robotstxt-file-4
Thats about the only thing I can find on it. Hope you can gleam some use out of it. Seem rather complicated for such an easy task.
-
Cheers Tom,
Yeah it is rather strange. There doesn't appear to be another plugin that should be causing this. Yoast is certainly the one relating to SEO.
Iain.
-
I think this is where I run out of useful things to add. That seems very odd to me.
Do you have any other plugins active that might be producing a robots.txt file?
-
Thanks Tom,
When I click Edit Files in Yoast it says:
"If you had a robots.txt file and it was editable, you could edit it from here."And yet, I do have one (albeit it appears a virtual one) as it can be viewed here:
http://www.iainmoran.com/robots.txtIf I try to view the site files on the server, via FTP or CPanel, there is no robots.txt file there!
I appear to be using the latest version of Yoast.
Thanks,
Iain.
-
Hey Iain,
There is a way to edit the file with Yoast. It should have a section called Edit Files when you click on the "SEO" part on the left hand side of your Wordpress dashboard. Once in there you should see robots.txt on the top. If you dont see it you might need to upgrade to the newest version of Yoast.
Thanks,
Tom
-
Thanks so much for your reply, Tom - very useful indeed!
I'm using Yoast SEO for WordPress, which apparently creates a virtual robots.txt and I can't see anyway to edit it as such. Unlike the posts themselves, which I can set to "noindex", the dynamic pages I cannot.
Unless I make my own robots.txt and upload it to my server, but I'm concerned that it will confuse matters and conflict with the one created/managed by Yoast?
Thanks again,
Iain.
-
Hey Iain,
I would do custom meta descriptions if possible. Meta descriptions are generally used to "sell" the content. They dont have any effect on ranking and if you dont feel like adding custom content to them, Google will just display the first content the page automatically. It is not considered duplicate content.
I would also probably get rid of those blog index pages from your xml sitemap and no index them if you can with meta robots or robots.txt. Those will produce duplicate content and you really want to drive people and bots to the posts themselves. Not the index pages of the posts.
I also wouldnt worry about the sidebar. As long as you are providing a decent amount of unique content on each page you will be fine.
Hope that helps.
Site looks good!
Tom
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 -
Duplicate Content issue in Magento: The product pages are available true 3 URL's! How can we solve this?
Right now the product page "gedroogde goji bessen" (Dutch for: dried goji berries) is available true 3 URL's! **http://www.sportvoeding.net/gedroogde-goji-bessen ** =>
Technical SEO | | Zanox
By clicking on the product slider on the homepage
http://www.sportvoeding.net/superfood/gedroogde-goji-bessen =>
First go to sportvoeding.net/superfood (main categorie) and than clicking on "gedroogde Goji bessen"
http://www.sportvoeding.net/superfood/goji-bessen/gedroogde-goji-bessen =>
When directly go to the subcategorie "Goji Bessen" true the menu and there clicking on "gedroogde Goji Bessen" We want to have the following product URL:
http://www.sportvoeding.net/superfood/goji-bessen/gedroogde-goji-bessen Does someone know´s a good Exetension for this issue?0 -
Can view pages of site, but Google & SEOmoz return 404
I can visit and view every page of a site (can also see source code), but Google, SEOmoz and others say anything other than home page is a 404 and Google won't index the sub-pages. I have check robots.txt and HTAccess and can't find anything wrong. Is this a DNS or server setting problem? Any ideas? Thanks, Fitz
Technical SEO | | FitzSWC0 -
Errors - 7300 - Duplicate Page Content..Help me..
Hi, I just received the crawl report with 7300 errors of duplicate page content. Site built using php. list of errors will be like this.. http://xxxxx.com/channels/ http://xxxxx.com/channels/?page=1 http://xxxxxx.com/channels/?page=2 I am not good in coding and using readymade script for this website. could anyone guide me to fix this issue? Thanks.
Technical SEO | | vilambara0 -
Error msg 'Duplicate Page Content', how to fix?
Hey guys, I'm new to SEO and have the following error msg 'Duplicate Page Content'. Of course I know what it means, but my question is how do you delete the old pages that has duplicate content? I use to run my website through Joomla! but have since moved to Shopify. I see that the duplicated site content is still from the old Joomla! site and I would like to learn how to delete this content (or best practice in this situation). Any advice would be very helpful! Cheers, Peter
Technical SEO | | pjuszczynski0 -
Can I format my H1 to be smaller than H2's and H3's on the same page?
I would like to create a web design with 12px H1 and for sub headings on the page to be more like 24px. Will search engines see this and dislike it? The reason for doing it is that I want to put a generic page title in the banner, and more poetic headings above the main body. Example: Small H1: Wholesale coffee, online coffee shop and London roastery Large h2: Respect the bean... Thanks
Technical SEO | | Crumpled_Dog
Scott0 -
Page rank 2 for home page, 3 for service pages
Hey guys, I have noticed with one of our new sites, the home page is showing page rank two, whereas 2 of the internal service pages are showing as 3. I have checked with both open site explorer and yahoo back links and there are by far more links to the home page. All quality and relevant directory submissions and blog comments. The site is only 4 months old, I wonder if anyone can shed any light on the fact 2 of the lesser linked pages are showing higher PR? Thanks 🙂
Technical SEO | | Nextman0 -
Which do you believe & why? Wordpress posts or pages?
I hear a lot of conflicting opinions regarding when to use pages over posts. If you were using wordpress mainly as a static site and less of a blog would you use pages over posts? Let's say it is a yacht review site. Would you set up most of the content (boat review pages) as pages or posts? I hear some say in that case you would want to use mostly pages and use posts for news related items. Then there are others that suggest only making the few (contact, about, privacy, terms) as pages and everything else created as posts organized into categories. Any thoughts? Also, is there a tool to find out if a website that is not yours is using a page or a post? Thanks
Technical SEO | | PEnterprises0