Duplicated titles and meta descriptions
-
Hi,
Dealing with both my duplicated titles and meta descriptions i'm wondering if there's a "quick" win I could potentially implement asap.
A bit of background:
Say I've 4 pages structured that way:- domain.com/us/productA.html for the US
- domain.com/gb/productA.html the UK
- domain.com/fr/productA.html for France
- domain.com/de/productA.html For Germany
At the moment, both my page titles and meta-descriptions are duplicated all over the place for product A.
Title is reading "Product A - company name"
MD is a bit better, being translated in all 3 languages (En, Fr, DE). Therefore being the same for the US and for the UK.Ideally, I would get unique page titles and MD all over the place. However, due to time and resource constraints, I can't make it happen overnight.
So my questions are pretty simple:
1. Can I create a rule for page titles to be "Product A - country - company name" or similar? Would that be enough to make the page titles unique? Is there any value doing so?
2. Can I "localize" duplicate MD by simply naming the country? I assume it is not enough in this case as all the rest would be copy/pasted.Ideally speaking, both my page titles and MD would be completely unique but I can't afford doing so in the short term.
Thanks!
-
it can involve a lot of work, but every meta title every meta description should be unique to that page and written in a white hat way.
It can cost a lot for a copywriter to do this work, but it is well worth it as it can improve the CTR.
-
it can involve a lot of work, but every meta title every meta description should be unique to that page and written in a white hat way.
It can cost a lot for a copywriter to do this work, but it is well worth it as it can improve the CTR.
-
Thanks Kate, will do the best I can in the light of your answers.
But as you've probably understood by now, with quite limited resources. -
I know we are way too late for this, but why did your company decide to internationalize the site structure if you can't get localization resources. I would have suggested using cookies and JS to set the currency, etc.
Anyway to your questions:
Or am I chasing ghost and this rule won't change much in the eyes of Google and my ranking? You can implement the title rule above, but I don't think it is going to help much.
**I don't care so much if US content shows up in the UK in term of content though are eCommerce experts would be quite pissed off as it would biased reporting. **
I recommend setting up IP location detection. If the user SEEMS to be in a different country, ask them if they are from the other country and if they say yes, then redirect them there. Don't assume they are in a specific country though.
Focus on getting those resources, you won't make a big impact without them in a high competition area.
-
Hi Kate,
Thank you so much for your answer. Some clarifications on your points:
On the competition part, there is a fair bit of competition indeed. But is an interim solution possible whilst more resources get eventually unlocked next year? And by an interim solution, I'm referring to that page title rule I mentioned in my question.
Or am I chasing ghost and this rule won't change much in the eyes of Google and my ranking?I don't care so much if US content shows up in the UK in term of content though are eCommerce experts would be quite pissed off as it would biased reporting. From my point of view, the only issue is around currency if visitors then decide to purchase something.
Lastly, I can't do much when it comes to the duplicated content as I stated in a different question since there are no available resources to solve this from a content perspective nor from a site architecture standpoint.
-
1. Can I create a rule for page titles to be "Product A - country - company name" or similar? Would that be enough to make the page titles unique? Is there any value doing so?
I think this depends on a few things.**First, what is the competition like in the SERPs? if you are in a super competitive space in any of those countries, this is probably not going to be enough. But it is possible it would be in some but not others. Competitive markets are game changers. **
**Second, how much do you care if the US content shows up in the UK? I worry about the similarities of the content in your examples. A title tag can get stupid "duplicate title" warnings to disappear, but I can't promise it'll make a difference in the SERPs. **
There is no harm in trying, however.
2. Can I "localize" duplicate MD by simply naming the country? I assume it is not enough in this case as all the rest would be copy/pasted.
**Duplicate MDs are less of a worry from my perspective. What I'd worry about more is the duplication of the actual pages. The content on the page is infinitely more important than what is in the MD. **
-
Thanks Tim.
I already have hreflang implemented and I wanted to dive more in the details of my international SEO so to speak.Alternate meta is definitely something I'm considering as per my question. And from my understanding of it, the variants I'm proposing are not enough to differentiate them. Correct?
But what about title tags? Neither you or Roman mention them. They don't matter much?
According to this article, it does. -
You would not worry about this at all?
I mean, say I do what you suggested above, then I should still review my titles and meta descriptions as per my initial question right? -
Have you taken a look here - it provides you with quite a few quality nuggets of information on international SEO.
I would certainly consider hreflang and alternate meta to help distinguish each location channel to help reduce duplicate content.
There are some other great resources on this too.
-
I would not worry about it, as long you made the right set it fo
- The canonical tags
- The language and region tags
- You submitted the sitemaps for every single region on Search Console
- Another good point to keep in mind is adding schemas to your pages
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
-
Duplicate Content
Crawl Diagnostics has returned several issues that I'm unsure how to fix. I'm guessing it's a canonical link issue but not entirely sure... Duplicate Page Content/Titles On a website (http://www.smselectronics.co.uk/market-sectors) with 6 market sectors but each pull the same 3 pages as child pages - certifications, equipment & case studies. On each products section where the page only shows X amount of items but there are several pages to fit all the products this creates multiple pages. There is also a similar pagination problem with the Blogs (auto generated date titles & user created SEO titles) & News listings. Blog Tags also seem to generate duplicate pages with the same content/titles as the parent page. Are these particularly important for SEO or is it more important to remove the duplication by deleting them? Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks
Technical SEO | | BBDCreative0 -
No Access to change duplicate product title and meta tags!?
I have a client who's website contains a php file to dynamically call a product xml file from an external source. I asked the web dev company if there was any way to access or change the titles and meta descriptions to be unique for each product and they said no, not with their system. With about 63 product pages is this going to hurt me trying to get him ranked locally? What is the best to handle a situation like this?
Technical SEO | | satoridesign0 -
We have over 3000 duplicate page titles, please help!
Hi, we did a crawl report and have over 3000 duplicate page titles. I'm not sure why this is happening... could it be because we have put posts in multiple categories? Can anyone help us with a quick fix? our site is www.stayathomemum.com.au thank you kindly, Chris
Technical SEO | | stayathomemum0 -
Is this considered Duplicate Content?
Good Morning, Just wondering if these pages are considered duplicate content? http://goo.gl/t9lkm http://goo.gl/mtfbf Can you please take a look and advise if it is considered duplicate and if so, what should i do to fix... Thanks
Technical SEO | | Prime850 -
Wordpress - Missing Meta Description and Title Elements Too Short
I have a wordpress site. When SeoMoz runs the crawl, my report shows 0 errors, but a lot of warnings in two areas: Missing Meta Description and Title Element Too Short. The only thing is, the URL's it shows under both of these categories look like this: http://www.millerhypnosisatlanta.com/author/Michael/page/4/ http://www.millerhypnosisatlanta.com/category/anxiety-panic/ http://www.millerhypnosisatlanta.com/tag/goals/ These are tags, categories, and author pages. How do I hide these from being seen by SeoMoz and Google? I mean I should do that right? Because there is no way I can add a description to these pages, or extend the title - right? Thanks in advance for your help!
Technical SEO | | DallasBonsai0 -
Strange duplicate url
From your csv report I have this strange issue. This url: elettrodomestici.yeppon.it/climatizzatori/condizionatori-fissi/prodotti/condizionatori-fissi-comfee/ it's a duplicate of this elettrodomestici.yeppon.it/climatizzatori/condizionatori-fissi/prodotti/condizionatori-fissi-comfee/ but the only url that I can see in the website is this one. Why the "-" is transalted some times in "%2D" referrer obviously is elettrodomestici.yeppon.it/climatizzatori/condizionatori-fissi/prodotti/condizionatori-fissi-comfee/solo-disponibili/ I have many duplicate url...Can you help me? Thanks
Technical SEO | | yeppon0 -
Up to my you-know-what in duplicate content
Working on a forum site that has multiple versions of the URL indexed. The WWW version is a top 3 and 5 contender in the google results for the domain keyword. All versions of the forum have the same PR, but but the non-WWW version has 3,400 pages indexed in google, and the WWW has 2,100. Even worse yet, there's a completely seperate domain (PR4) that has the forum as a subdomain with 2,700 pages indexed in google. The dupe content gets completely overwhelming to think about when it comes to the PR4 domain, so I'll just ask what you think I should do with the forum. Get rid of the subdomain version, and sometimes link between two obviously related sites or get rid of the highly targeted keyword domain? Also what's better, having the targeted keyword on the front of Google with only 2,100 indexed pages or having lower rankings with 3,400 indexed pages? Thanks.
Technical SEO | | Hondaspeder0