Wordpress site, MOZ showing missing meta description but pages do not exist on backend
-
I've got a wordpress website (a client) and MOZ keeps showing missing meta descriptions. When I look at the pages these are nonsense pages, they do exist somewhere but I am not seeing them on the backend. Questions: 1) how do I fix this? Maybe it's a rel con issue?
- why is this referring to "non-sense" pages? When I go to the page there is nothing on it except maybe an image or the headline, it's very strange.
Any input out there I greatly appreciate.
Thank you
-
What kind of CMS do you use? That might help figure it out.
Sounds like your CMS is creating these garbage pages, whether or not they live on the backend or not.
On the other hand, this is pretty common and it may not be something you need to worry about. Are the pages cached by Google? You can find out by pasting this search parameter in your browser:
cache:http://example.com/url
or a site: search for an overview of all your cached URLs. (site:example.com)
If the garbage URLs aren't there, you probably don't need to worry much. On the other hand if you see pages of bad results, this might be something you need to address with your developer.
-
you wont find pages on the back end, pages are on the front end,
Can you give us same sample links, thanks
-
The example of few URLs would help but let me tell you something pretty straight! If the URL is giving a 200 header status that means the URL is there and Moz tool will cover it and show it in the report.
If you think these are “sense-less” pages why not 404 them or redirect them to pages that make some sense! #justanidea
Hope this helps!
-
Hi Wendy
It's because those pages are there. You can have those deleted if you dont need them. They are possibly separate HTML files so if you are using a CMS, they won't show there.
Just to be sure, you could show us an example page and we can let you know.
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
-
Home Page Disappears From Google - But Rest of Site Still Ranked
As title suggests we are running into a serious issue of the home page disapearing from Google search results whilst the rest of the site still remains. We search for it naturally cannot find a trace, then use a "site:" command in Google and still the home page does not come up. We go into web masters and inspect the home page and even Google states that the page is indexable. We then run the "Request Indexing" and the site comes back on Google. This is having a damaging affect and we would like to understand why this issue is happening. Please note this is not happening on just one of our sites but has happened to three which are all located on the same server. One of our brand which has the issue is: www.henweekends.co.uk
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | JH_OffLimits0 -
Page exist on mobile but not on Desktop
Hi, I had a query that i have created a new URL on mobile site this url does not exist on desktop. So what is impact of this on SEO and is it harmful for SEO, if yes then what we can do to handle this.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | vivekrathore0 -
Tools to test meta descriptions?
Hey does anyone know of any tools which can test your meta descriptions against competitors meta descriptions for specific keyword terms. I know one tool called SERP Turkey which uses mechanical turk, i was wondering if there is any others on the market? Even a tool which can automatically score your meta description against others on the SERP results page. E..g optimised, keyword, call to action, etc. Cheers, Chris
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | jayoliverwright0 -
Joomla to Wordpress site migration - thousands of 404s
I recently migrated a site from Joomla to Wordpress. In advance I exported the HTML pages from Joomla using Screaming Frog and did 301 redirects on all those pages. However Webmaster Tools is now telling me (a week after putting the redirects in place) that there are >7k 404s. Many of them aren't HTML pages, just index.php files but I didn't think I would have to export these in my Screaming Frog crawl. We have since done a blanket 301 redirect for anything with index.php in it but Webmaster Tools is still picking them up as 404s. So my question is, what should I have done with Screaming Frog re exporting to ensure I captured all pages to redirect and what should I now do to fix the 404s that Webmaster Tools is picking up?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Bua0 -
Help with Effective Meta Description
Can someone give me a sample of an effective meta description tag? All of the best practice stuff I read doesn't talk about how to raise CTR. It seems to me that this is a neglected area of SEO, and we want to do this right. Obviously, we will need to test. For example, my main home page keyword is "IT Support" Things I might want to put in the tag: Free Network Assessments 100% Risk Free Trials "Relentless IT Support" (Major Theme) 30 Years of Experience (since 1984) Eliminate your IT Support Headaches Forever (Too long) Call to action? BTW, Thanks to everyone for your help. This is a great community. Solid advice from experts. Here's an example of what I would create Relentless IT Support Since 1984. Trust and Accountability. 100% Risk Free Trials. Contact us today for Free IT Assessment.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | CsmBill0 -
How important is the HTML structure for on-page/on-site SEO?
To be more specific, say a page layout has Header, Body, Left Sidebar, Footer sections. Which layout from the following options is more SEO-friendly? Header > Body > Right Sidebar > Footer Body > Header > Right Sidebar > Footer Does it make a big difference to code HTML so that the the copy of the body appears in front of all other sections when spiders crawl a website? Is it worth taking extra steps to make this happen? I am asking this question because our site has a header navigation with a lot of dropdown menus. So I assume that this is "noise" for spiders as it pushes the main content of the page down. Please bear in mind that the question is more geared towards how search engine see the page rather than how it appears to the end user as layout can be controlled by CSS.This question also assumes that all other on-site SEO best practices are followed for both options.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Saugar0 -
Push for site-wide https, but all pages in index are http. Should I fight the tide?
Hi there, First Q&A question 🙂 So I understand the problems caused by having a few secure pages on a site. A few links to the https version a page and you have duplicate content issues. While there are several posts here at SEOmoz that talk about the different ways of dealing with this issue with respect to secure pages, the majority of this content assumes that the goal of the SEO is to make sure no duplicate https pages end up in the index. The posts also suggest that https should only used on log in pages, contact forms, shopping carts, etc." That's the root of my problem. I'm facing the prospect of switching to https across an entire site. In the light of other https related content I've read, this might seem unecessary or overkill, but there's a vaild reason behind it. I work for a certificate authority. A company that issues SSL certificates, the cryptographic files that make the https protocol work. So there's an obvious need our site to "appear" protected, even if no sensitive data is being moved through the pages. The stronger push, however, stems from our membership of the Online Trust Alliance. https://otalliance.org/ Essentially, in the parts of the internet that deal with SSL and security, there's a push for all sites to utilize HSTS Headers and force sitewide https. Paypal and Bank of America are leading the way in this intiative, and other large retailers/banks/etc. will no doubt follow suit. Regardless of what you feel about all that, the reality is that we're looking at future that involves more privacy protection, more SSL, and more https. The bottom line for me is; I have a site of ~800 pages that I will need to switch to https. I'm finding it difficult to map the tips and tricks for keeping the odd pesky https page out of the index, to what amounts to a sitewide migratiion. So, here are a few general questions. What are the major considerations for such a switch? Are there any less obvious pitfalls lurking? Should I even consider trying to maintain an index of http pages, or should I start work on replacing (or have googlebot replace) the old pages with https versions? Is that something that can be done with canonicalization? or would something at the server level be necessary? How is that going to affect my page authority in general? What obvious questions am I not asking? Sorry to be so longwinded, but this is a tricky one for me, and I want to be sure I'm giving as much pertinent information as possible. Any input will be very much appreciated. Thanks, Dennis
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | dennis.globalsign0 -
How do Google Site Search pages rank
We have started using Google Site Search (via an XML feed from Google) to power our search engines. So we have a whole load of pages we could link to of the format /search?q=keyword, and we are considering doing away with our more traditional category listing pages (e.g. /biology - not powered by GSS) which account for much of our current natural search landing pages. My question is would the GoogleBot treat these search pages any differently? My fear is it would somehow see them as duplicate search results and downgrade their links. However, since we are coding the XML from GSS into our own HTML format, it may not even be able to tell.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | EdwardUpton610