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
-
How Often Can I Change My Meta Titles? (Product Discounts)
Hello, I have an ecommerce website. Due to discounts and sales on most of my products, the discount rates change very often. Some products have %10 discounts for 3 days and then same products might have %50 discounts for another 5 days. I would like to show these product specific discounts on Meta Titles and Descriptions dynamically. My system will automatically update the Meta Titles once the discount on a product changes. My question is, how often can I change the Meta Titles? Is changing them (only discount rates = 1word) too often bad for my SEO? What is Goolge's approach on this? Thank you in advance for all your help. Best,
Technical SEO | | yigitgok
Yigit0 -
Handling of Duplicate Content
I just recently signed and joined the moz.com system. During the initial report for our web site it shows we have lots of duplicate content. The web site is real estate based and we are loading IDX listings from other brokerages into our site. If though these listings look alike, they are not. Each has their own photos, description and addresses. So why are they appear as duplicates – I would assume that they are all too closely related. Lots for Sale primarily – and it looks like lazy agents have 4 or 5 lots and input the description the same. Unfortunately for us, part of the IDX agreement is that you cannot pick and choose which listings to load and you cannot change the content. You are either all in or you cannot use the system. How should one manage duplicate content like this? Or should we ignore it? Out of 1500+ listings on our web site it shows 40 of them are duplicates.
Technical SEO | | TIM_DOTCOM0 -
Unavoidable duplicate page
Hi, I have an issue where I need to duplicate content on a new site that I am launching. Visitors to the site need to think that product x is part of two different services. e.g. domain.com/service1/product-x domain.com/service2/product-x Re-writing content for product x for each service section is not an option but possibly I could get over that only one product-x page is indexed by search engines. What's the best way to do this? Any advice would be appreciated. Thanks, Stuart
Technical SEO | | Stuart260 -
Duplicate Page Title & Content Penalty On Website Tonight Platform
I built my primary website on Website Tonight (WT) five years ago when I was a net newbie and I'm presently new to seomoz. The initial crawl indicated a problem with duplicate page title and duplicate content with my website home page in WT. It turns out that the WT platform makes you assign a file name to your homepage i.e: www.business.com/homepage.html that differs from the www.business.com that you want as your homepage url. Apparently the search engines are recognizing these identical pages as separate and duplicate. I know that the standard answer would be to just do a 301 redirect from the long file name to the short file name - end of story. But WT does not allow you to do 301 redirects and they also do not give you the ability to go into the htaccess file to fix this yourself manually. I spoke to the folks at WT tonight and they claim that they automatically do 301 redirects on the platform. But if this true then why am I getting the error message in seomoz? Does anyone know if this is a problem? If so, does anyone here have a fix? Thanks in advance. Sincerely - Bill in Denver
Technical SEO | | anxietycoach0 -
Understanding Duplicate Titles in Wordpress
I have duplicate title errors in Wordpress and I cannot pinpoint the problem. I have my blog set up so that the home page of the blog has the most recent posts. In my campaign report somehow the page directory is being found and I can't find any links on my blog to those pages. the errors are on pages that are like the following www.example.com/blog/page/13/ www.example.com/blog/page/14/ I am using Yoast and I thought I had it set up correctly. The other pages have the correct title and canonical tags, but he urls ending with page do not, but the page directory is duplicating the home page title. How or where can i fix this issue?
Technical SEO | | hfranz0 -
Duplicate Homepage In Google
Hi Just found through my SEO dashboard, Google has two versions of the same homepage, the root page, plus the index.html page, causing duplicate content from both the pages. what is the best option to ensure google only have 1 version of the homepage listed?
Technical SEO | | rfksolutionsltd0 -
Duplicate Content
Many of the pages on my site are similar in structure/content but not exactly the same. What amount of content should be unique for Google to not consider it duplicate? If it is something like 50% unique would it be preferable to choose one page as the canonical instead of keeping them both as separate pages?
Technical SEO | | theLotter0 -
Wrong Title Tag & No Meta Description showing up in Google SERP's
I'd like to know what I can do to get the correct title tag + meta description that I have on the page for www.myescondidomovers.com/ to actually show up in the SERP's on Google? It's currently just showing my main keyword and the domain name, nothing else. See attached and thanks in advance for you help. Much appreciated. SERPS.png
Technical SEO | | afranklin0