Best practice: unique meta descriptions on blog 'tag' pages
-
Hi everyone,
I'm curious, are there best practices for introducing unique meta descriptions on blog tag pages (I'm using wordpress)?
For instance, using platinum seo, on an original post, the meta description is either the excerpt or a specified custom sentence. It doesn't appear that platinum seo allows for custom descriptions on tag pages.
Love to hear your thoughts.
Thanks!
Peter
-
Kane is correct here.
Generally, you don't want to index tagged pages because you'll run into duplicate content issues in addition to providing useless pages that do not bring much value.
In terms of user navigation, tagged pages can be convenient but not as a strategy to grow your site. Here's another example of a personal site that has the category page with a "noindex" tag (http://www.onblastblog.com/blog/) and chose to remove tagged pages altogether.
If unique content was written on that category page, only then can it be considered to be indexed.
If you're using WordPress, the best plugin to organize your basic title & description data is Yoast.
Biznit, since you wrote that message a couple years ago, I hope you haven't exploited tag pages by creating hundreds and indexing them.
-
Hi Chaps, Nice thread....is there a plug in that will take the title and description of your tags and put it into the page? It seems kinda obvious... I'm happy to write unique content for each tag page (I have the same issue, alot of my tag pages rank well)...but I want to improve those tag pages with unique content. It kinda seems ridiculous why it is not easy to add unique content...perhaps a unique "area" - but without using a widget of text that only shows up on a give tag page (perhaps using widget logic! zzz).
I have like 200 tag pages.....if I could just have a plugin that takes the tag title - as page h1 title and the description as a unique intro paragraph that pops up automatically each one (if I choose to write it)...I guess that would be better. All I would have to do is keep the descriptions up to date in the wordpress back end?
I'm amazed that someone hasn't done this, because tags and categories are a great way to build a deep seo friendly website - and then with time and effort, it should be equally easy to edit those pages (as if they were a page), and why they aren't is a mystery to little old me....but I'll settle for an easy way to create a unique header and paragraph for the moment!
-
My opinion is that the tag pages if done correctly are not considered duplicate content, just make sure that you only use excerpts on your tag pages and not the full article. Custom descriptions for tags is not found in Platinum SEO as there is no need, you can assign tag descriptions directly from Wordpress > Posts > Tags . Just like you, my tag pages rank very well and bring me a lot of traffic
-
Gotcha. I agree - don't cut off the traffic if those pages are already ranking. Unique descriptions for each tag page are definitely the way to go, if you can keep up with all of your tags. This will obviously be much easier if you use 1-3 tags per post, and not 10 random ones. I personally try to reuse tags as much as possible, and combine similar ones... helps keep your sanity.
For the record, I consider the unique paragraph approach the ideal solution for categories and tags, but typically tags are harder to keep up with.
-
Thanks for replying, Kane. I'm with you re: noindexing of tags. I'm all for it, but I have a few tags that return a reasonable amount of traffic on a daily basis. I'd hate to cut it off so I guess I'm forced with dealing on a tag by tag basis (ugh).
After I posted this I figured out how to 'activate' the tag description on my blog (it was a theme issue). So, now it's off to setting up custom descriptions...
-
I usually noindex Wordpress tag pages, meaning I tell Google not to show them in search results. This is because they don't add a ton of SEO value to the site - tag pages are typically 100% duplicate content.
That said, IF you provide a custom description at the top of each tag page, you could make an argument for keeping them indexed, since there would now be relevant unique content at the top of each page.
Here's an example from a personal site where I keep my category pages indexed: http://www.seattlehomestead.com/category/gardening/. See the paragraph at the top of the page? That's the minimum amount of unique content you'd want on a tag or category page to keep it indexed.
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
-
Meta Title Tags - Quick question!
Hi all, Our category Meta Title Tags are a little woeful and so I'm in the process of rewriting them. Let's say you have a product for sale.... some inkjet cartridges for a Canon BJ10V printer for example. In an effort to keep things concise I was thinking that for this category I should have the meta title set simply as: 'Canon BJ10V Inkjet Cartridges' and perhaps our company name after this text (and a pipe delimiter) This takes us just under 50 characters which is ideal but doesn't include any real keyword variation and will result in the company name being duplicated at the tail of the title tag on 6,000 odd pages. A large number of my competitors have title tags along the lines of: 'Canon BJ10V Cheap Inkjet Cartridges for Canon BJ-10V Ink Printers' I understand the reasoning behind this but does the variation of keywords compensate for the fact that the title looks spammy (to both humans and Search Engines). What would you do? Keep it clean and concise or stuff the title full of keywords. In the event of the former would you include the company name in each title in the knowledge they would be well under 50 characters without? Thanks for your help.
Technical SEO | | ChrisHolgate1 -
Product Level 301 Redirects Best Practice
When creating a 301 mapping file for product pages, what is best practice
Technical SEO | | Bucktown
for which version of the URL to redirect to? Base directory or one
subdirectory/category path. Example Old URL: www.example.com/clothing/pants/blue-pants-123 Which of the following should be the new target URL: www.example.com/apparel/pants/blue-pants-123 www.example.com/apparel/blue-apparel/blue-pants-123 www.example.com/apparel/collections/spring-collection/blue-pants-123 www.example.com/blue-pants-123 This is assuming the canonical tag will be www.example.com/blue-pants-123. Also, if www.example.com/blue-pants-123 cannot be reached via site
navigation would it be detrimental to make that the target URL if Google
cannot crawl that naturally? Thanks0 -
Meta Tag Description Warning is wrong. Description is indexed and shows.
My crawl report shows that there are 22 Meta Tag Descriptions missing. I double checked on Google and it shows the meta descriptions just fine. What's wrong with the report or am I missing something?
Technical SEO | | onlinemarketersdotca0 -
What if meta description tag comes before meta title tag? Do the search engines disregard or penalize if the order is not title then description in the HTML?
Do the search engines disregard or penalize if the order is not title then description in the HTML? A client's webmaster is a newbie to SEO and did just this. Suggestions?
Technical SEO | | alankoen1230 -
Schema Tags Configuration - Ecommerce Category Pages
I'm semi confident that some schema tags are implemented correctly on our ecommerce category pages.. but I would just like to double check. An example url http://www.freshcargo.co.uk/shoes I have just fixed some errors using the Google rich snippets tool... but the thing I'm not sure about is why the prices are being displayed as seperate items Eg: http://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/richsnippets?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.freshcargo.co.uk%2Fshoes&view= Thanks in advance
Technical SEO | | edwardlewis0 -
Language/country redirect best practice?
Hi, What is SEO best practice when it comes to redirecting users from www.domain.com to their specific language/country, let's say www.domain.com/de for Germany? From what I heard in on of the whiteboard fridays, it seems to be Javascript based on IP and browser language, and then set a cookie - correct? Or should we let our users manually select their language/country at the first visit? Any suggestion appreciated, thanks!
Technical SEO | | rtora0 -
Canonical tag in preferred and duplicate page
Hi, I have a super spiffy (not) CMS that tends to create some pages at the root level of the site (not where I want it) i.e. www.site.com/page.htm as well as the desired location i.e. www.site.com/category/keyword/page.htm . Now obviously a canonical tag inserted into the URL at the undesired location would be the best option, however the source code is exactly the same for both pages (can’t change this) i.e. if I put the canonical tag that reads www.site.com/category/keyword/page.htm"/> it will appear in the head section of both pages, the desired URL and the non desired URL. Will a canonical tag inserted into the head section of a the preferred URL directing the search engine spiders pretty much to itself cause more grieft than the solution it offers re duplicate content ? Marc
Technical SEO | | NRMA0 -
Should there be a canonical tag on my 404 error page?
In my crawl diagnostics, I notice some 4xx client errors. They are appearing for pages that no longer exist, so I'm not sure what the problem is. Shouldn't they just be dealt as 404's? Anyway, on closer inspection I noticed that my 404 error page contains a canonical tag which points to the missing page. Could this be the issue? Is it a good idea to remove the canonical tag from this error page? Thanks.
Technical SEO | | Leighm0