Unfamiliar Meta Description Tags
-
I'm working with a client who uses a CMS which loads meta tags into their site through its backend. On-page I see this in the source:
-
Hi There
Any luck with this? What CMS are you using? Most CMS's allow editing of this sort of thing. If not, as others have suggested you could see if the descriptions show up in something like Screaming Frog or even just a simple header checker like http://urivalet.com/
-
When you say you see that on-page, do you mean when you look at the source inside the CMS, or on the actual webpage?
If it is the CMS, I agree, don't worry about it. When I first started with the CMS I am using now, I got very upset when I saw image links that looked like this: src="~/media/46166ADB93F248DDB7AF5C6CC8BD479C.ashx
I wanted easy-to-read links with appropriate keywords!
After wasting most of a day working on "fixing" them, I found out that once you get to the actual live webpage, everything looked fine. So I had to spend the better part of another day changing them back. [That is what you get for messing with objects.]
-
Mike, the added id=ctl08_hm content is appended by the CMS it seems. It's not a choice made by the client or myself
-
Hello,
You should still be able to access the page to figure out the meta description that has been officially entered. Also, was that an example? Why would your meta description be id=ctl08_hm?
Thanks,
- Mike
-
As far as you also include the name="description" and its value in the "content" attribute, having an ID on a Meta Tag won't probably avoid it from being correctly read by Google althought it is not W3C compliant. According to HTML specification, the meta element cannot have that ID attribute: The only valid attributes for meta tags are:
- name = name [CS]
This attribute identifies a property name. This specification does not list legal values for this attribute. - content = cdata [CS]
This attribute specifies a property's value. This specification does not list legal values for this attribute. - scheme = cdata [CS]
This attribute names a scheme to be used to interpret the property's value (see the section on profiles for details). - http-equiv = name [CI]
This attribute may be used in place of the name attribute. HTTP servers use this attribute to gather information for HTTP response message headers.
Also, you can include:
lang (language information), dir (text direction)Do you know why do you include that ID and how to remove it if it has no use?
- name = name [CS]
-
It looks like the added portion is going to prevent recognition for the overall meta description tag. Is this a custom tag being used to identify products / pages internally to the CMS? For meta description, you'll want to use the syntax:
-
Hi there
I would search the page in Google and see if the meta description is reflection. I would also make sure that ScreamingFrog is seeing those as well.
I have had clients that used this and it worked, so I wouldn't be too concerned. But I would definitely search and see if it appears. If it doesn't, I would go with the standard method of implementation.
Hope this helps! Good luck!
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
-
Title and Description for blog pages
Hello, Could you please help me figure out how to create title and description for my website blog's pages? And for projects' pagination (third example below): https://www.titanpavers.com/blog/page/3/
Technical SEO | | VELV
https://www.titanpavers.com/blog/page/4/
https://www.titanpavers.com/projects/page/2/ Thank you!0 -
Duplicate Title Tag
We are getting a Duplicate Title Tag error on our pages but we have different titles and the differences are being seen by Google. We are using the code <%@ Page Title="School Lunch Software Pricing || EZ School Apps"%> Any ideas?
Technical SEO | | EZParentCenter0 -
Should I use a canonical tag or 301 with Wordpress posts?
Hi all, I'm trying to determine if canonical or 301 is a better way of handling an issue on my site. The Background I've got a Wordpress website where pages are in-depth reference articles and the posts are for short news blurbs. When I produce a new resource page, I also make a short post telling readers about the new resource. I use Yoast's Wordpress SEO plug in. Sometimes, Google will rank the 200 word post higher than the 2000 word resource page. I suspect that is because of the order in which they were crawled by Google, but I do not know for sure. The Question To make sure that the resource page is seen as the most important location on the site for the topic, should I use the canonical section in the Yoast plugin on the post to point to the page? Or should I wait, and after a few days (when the news blurb is off of the first page) just 301 the post to the page? Are there any link juice considerations when using the canonical option? Thanks for the help! Richard
Technical SEO | | RichardInFlorida0 -
All META descriptions gone
Hi there, Since almost a week now, all of my optmized META descriptions has been gone in Google. The last few years Google has always shown all of the optimized META descriptions. My website is an ecommerce site (phone accessories) and all pages have its own unique content (url, text, title, description) and score well in Google. The META descriptions are created by using a template like this: At [brandname] you find lots of [variable category product] * USP 1 * USP 2 * USP 3 All META descriptions differ from each other only by the variable category product. Something tells me this is an effect of the Panda 4.0 update. I tested with a category page by replacing the META description for a 100% unique one. Then I asked Google (via Webmaster tools) to reindex the page. Today the new description got indexed. This means uniqueness is important. My question is: how do I get the optimized META descriptions back? Creating real unique descriptions (means not using a template) for every page is very hard for a webhop since all category pages have the same message to tell (only difference is the type of product), I want to use USP's, and META descriptions of all productpages have been lost too (over 15000 different products). Please help!
Technical SEO | | MarcelMoz
Thanks in advance. Marcel0 -
Canonical link tag for https - any disadvantages for SEO?
Hi Mozzers, We have a website that has both http as well as https indexed. I proposed the solution of implementing a canonical link tag on all pages (including the login/secure ones). Any disadvantages I could expect? Thanks!
Technical SEO | | DeptAgency0 -
Magento CMS Page Meta Titles?
Hey All, I'm experiencing a bit of a problem with creating a custom, separate Meta Title for CMS pages in Magento 1.6.1.0. I know this can be added through _CMS => Page => Page Information => Page Title, _but this method presents issues, as a length of 70 characters is a little too long for breadcrumbs. I would like a way to add a second specific meta title field that overrides this first Page Title field_. _ I did find something that does this in Magento Connect for around $50.00USD, but this seems like something that should be easy and free to do. Any suggestions as to a workaround or alternative free plugin would be most welcome! Thanks!
Technical SEO | | G2W0 -
Meta Description,Title
If I changed the meta description and title of the post from the existing one how long will it may take to get indexed in Google. How can I fasten the process of indexing the changed meta description and title. Thanks, Venkee.
Technical SEO | | Venkee0 -
How do I add meta descriptions to Archives in Wordpress?
My most recent crawl returned a number of 'missing meta description' errors, and when I checked individual URLs, it turned out they were Wordpress Archived pages - for individual months and days (e.g. http:// .../2011/01). What's the best way to go about adding descriptions to these pages, if at all? Or should I have these pages not be indexed? I am using the All in One SEO plugin, so maybe there is an easy fix through this plugin, or it may be the cause of these errors? Any help is appreciated, thanks in advance! **EDIT After looking it up further, I have decided to use noindex for Archives, which should solve my problem right? Or is there a benefit to having those archived pages?
Technical SEO | | NetPicks0