Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
Meta Tag Descriptions not being found in Moz Crawls
-
Hey guys,
I have been managing a few websites and have input them into Moz for crawl reports, etc.
For a while I have noticed that we were getting a gratuitous amount of errors when it came to the number of missing meta tags. It was numbering in the 200's. The sites were in place before I got here and a lot of the older posts no one had even attempted to include tags, links of the page or anything.
As they are all Wordpress Sites and they all already had the Yoast/Wordpress SEO plug-in installed on them, I decided I would go through each post and media file one at a time and update their meta tags via the plug in. I personally did this so I know that I added and saved each one, however the Moz crawl reports continue to show that we are missing roughly 200 meta tags. I've seen a huge drop off in 404 errors and stuff since I went through and double checked everything on the sites, however the meta tag errors persist.
Is this the case that Moz is not recognizing the tags when it crawls because I used the Yoast Plugin? Or would you say that the plugin is the issue and I should find another way to add meta tags to the pages and posts on the site? My main concern is that if Moz is having issues crawling the sites, is Google also seeing the same thing?
The URLS include:
sundancevacationsblog.com
sundancevacationsnews.com
sundancevacationscharities.comAny help would be appreciated!
-
Glad to hear it got resolved so quickly! Keep up the good job!
-
Great that you have it fixed! (Did you look in the Yoast settings to see if different post types have different settings? That could be part of your original problem...)
-
I have implemented a few changes on the site, including that of adding another plugin to add meta tags. As it appears, for some reason the Yoast plugin was adding a meta description for articles and posts, however it never included authors or page descriptions. Weird.
The page was re-crawled today and all of the Meta Tag errors are gone! Hooray! Now I just need to work on the super long titles that the writers before me used.
Thanks for the help to all the took the time to post!
-
You are correct, after doing some more looking around I have found the same things. Some of the pages have meta descriptions and some don't. It seems that Yoast is doing it's job, however I added a different plugin to help add some additional tags. That has also seemed to help, but again has not totally fixed the issue.
Clearly I am going to have to delve deeper into this as I have already taken a day up looking at it. I will edit a few more things and then re-crawl and see what I come up with. I'll post the results here as well.
-
Looking at the first one with Screaming Frog, there are 112 pages without descriptions.
Visually checking an example of those, http://sundancevacationsnews.com/, I see in the description, an empty description.
Checking one with a description: https://sundancevacationsblog.com/sundance-vacations-travel-advice/international/, I see
It just looks like some of them didn’t have descriptions added. Check back in Yoast again and look at the pages that Moz says have no description. Does anything look different in those than in the ones that do have descriptions?
I don't think the problem is the plug-in since both the pages with and without the descriptions are using it, and yes, Google will see the same thing.
-
Hi Jackie,
What I'd advise you to do, is to create a Screaming Frog Crawl so you can compare the two crawl data. If both show missing meta descriptions on the same pages, then there might be something on your side.
It is always good to double-check the information you are provided. So you are sure that the issue isn't a bug.
Gr., Keszi
P.S. I made a quick crawl with Screaming Frog on the first domain: sundancevacationsblog.com and found quite a big number of Missing Meta Titles.
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
-
Unsolved Need Moz SEO Wordpress Plugin With API
Re: Moz WordPress Plugin? Hi guys,
Moz Pro | | mrezair
I need some Moz SEO Wordpress Plugins For my website working with Moz API. I've already found Moz DA-PA Checker plugin Moz DA-PA Checker But Need SEO Plugins too. Any Suggestion will be appreciated.0 -
Unsolved Does Moz Pro include Moz Local
My client has bought about six Moz Local accounts and are pleased with results. We have not yet used your Moz Pro program. The client might be interested in switching to the Moz Pro if those Moz Local accounts can be included into it. Please let me know as soon as possible. Thanks!
Moz Pro | | gallowaywebteam0 -
Robots.txt blocking Moz
Moz are reporting the robots.txt file is blocking them from crawling one of our websites. But as far as we can see this file is exactly the same as the robots.txt files on other websites that Moz is crawling without problems. We have never come up against this before, even with this site. Our stats show Rogerbot attempting to crawl our site, but it receives a 404 error. Can anyone enlighten us to the problem please? http://www.wychwoodflooring.com -Christina
Moz Pro | | ChristinaRadisic0 -
MOZ Versus HUBSPOT??? If We Discontinue MOZ Subscription and Get HUBSPOT, Anything Lost?
How does Hubspot compare with MOZ? Doe it provide similar features or is the functionality very different? Is Hubspot complementary to MOZ or could it be used as a substitute? If we stopped our MOZ subscription and subscribed to Hubspot would we lose anything? Thanks, Alan
Moz Pro | | Kingalan10 -
White Label Version of Moz Pro?
I may have missed it, but is there a white label option for Moz Pro? I have a few clients that would like to login and have a look at competition, rankings, etc. Perhaps something like WebCEO or MySEOtool?
Moz Pro | | TysonDowns0 -
Moz & Xenu Link Sleuth unable to crawl a website (403 error)
It could be that I am missing something really obvious however we are getting the following error when we try to use the Moz tool on a client website. (I have read through a few posts on 403 errors but none that appear to be the same problem as this) Moz Result Title 403 : Error Meta Description 403 Forbidden Meta Robots_Not present/empty_ Meta Refresh_Not present/empty_ Xenu Link Sleuth Result Broken links, ordered by link: error code: 403 (forbidden request), linked from page(s): Thanks in advance!
Moz Pro | | ZaddleMarketing0 -
Moz WordPress Plugin?
WordPress is currently 18% of the Internet. Given its huge footprint, wouldn't it make sense for Moz to develop a WP plugin that can not only report site metrics, but help fix and optimize site structure directly from within the site? Just curious - I can't be the only one who wonders if I'm implementing Moz findings/recommendations correctly given the myriad of WP SEO plugins, authors, implementations.
Moz Pro | | twelvetwo.net5 -
Meta keywords no longer in use
Can someone point me to the official article explaining why meta keywords are no longer taken into account by search engines please? I know Moz has indicated that search engines ignore them, but I would like to read a bit more about it - what was the reason behind it and since when.
Moz Pro | | coremediadesign0