Duplicated Meta Descriptions on Dynamic Paginated Pages
-
If the title didn't put you off please read on!
According to our latest Moz Crawl Report we have circa 700 instances of duplicate Meta Description on pages that are both dynamically created and also paginated, however, I believe that number to be greater!
We are unable to manual make changes to these pages (because they are dynamic) and so we need ask our web devs to create a change in how the Meta is created...
If I am not making myself clear (and there is a good chance that I'm not!) then here is an example of what I mean;
http://www.bolsovercruiseclub.com/cruise-deals/silversea-cruise-deals/
There are 92 pages of cruise deals for this particular operator with the results of each page having the option to sort by 4 categories;
- Recommended
- Cruise Price
- Sail Date
- Best Value
4 x 92 = 368 instances just for this one operator!
The current Meta Desc is;
A selection of the best Silversea cruise deals taking in over 800 destinations across all 7 continents.
...which isn't great I know!
The problem is how to make each page (in each category) unique
If any of you have incurred anything similar and have any kind of solution or recommendation then please respond - I would be most grateful!
Andy
-
With the link I see what you mean. Hard to put a variable on a listing like that.
There is possibly another option that would be to use canonical with rel next / previous this defines the relationship to the search engines. Have a look at Google's Webmaster blog here.
Good luck,
Don
-
Thanks for your reply Don but I don't think that is going to work...
Taking this page (page 4) as an example; http://www.bolsovercruiseclub.com/cruise-deals/silversea-cruise-deals/?order_by=departure_date which is categorised by 'sail date'
There are 10 cruises on this page sailing to different destinations on different dates - each cruise opens up a new (child) page where the meta desc is actually correct (unique at least) due to previous web development rules being implemented!
The problem is with the actual 92 (parent) pages - the only solution I can see is to include a page number to the meta...
Something along the lines of;
Page 4 of Silversea cruise deals to over 800 destinations across all 7 continents ordered by sail date.
Page 4 of Silversea cruise deals to over 800 destinations across all 7 continents ordered by best value
Page 4 of Silversea cruise deals to over 800 destinations across all 7 continents ordered by recommended
Page 4 of Silversea cruise deals to over 800 destinations across all 7 continents ordered by cruise price
Actually I think that works...
Thanks again Don, between us I think we might have cracked it!
Andy
-
Hi Andy,
I have to options. First the easiest. Canonical the pages to the main page. Pretty simple but possibly not the best.
The second solution would be to make the descriptions & titles dynamic as well. For example (I don't have all the info) so bare with me.
Base Description:A selection of the best Silversea cruise deals taking in over 800 destinations across all 7 continents.
On Category Selection:
$category Silversea Cruise Deals $silversea_deal_1Which would give you these 4 initial descriptions:
- Recommended Silversea Cruise Deals
- Cruise Price Silversea Cruise Deals
- Sail Date Silversea Cruise Deals
- Best Value Silversea Cruise Deals
Then you define the deals..
$silversea_deal_1 = 4 Day 3 Night Key West To Bahama's $499Now you append the variable to the description:
- Recommended Silversea Cruise Deals 4 Day 3 Night Key West To Bahama's $499
- Cruise Price Silversea Cruise Deals 4 Day 3 Night Key West To Bahama's $499
- Sail Date Silversea Cruise Deals 4 Day 3 Night Key West To Bahama's $499
- Best Value Silversea Cruise Deals 4 Day 3 Night Key West To Bahama's $499
That is how I typically handle multiple pages that need to rank SEO'wise but have dynamic content. You just find a pattern that you can use and plug in the variables, just like any of the content but you do it inside the SEO part.
Hope that makes sense and helps,
Don
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
-
Why is my home page ranking much higher than my collection page?
Hi everyone, Why is my client's home page ranking high for a certain keyword phrase rather than a collection page I have which is well optimised for this keyword? The collection page is on the 10th SERPs page. I did see there were keywords used in the footer of page and the keyword was also used in some intro text on the home page so I removed the keyword from these two places nearly 2 weeks ago and requested google to reindex both the collection page and home page and I've not seen any improvement of the collection page's ranking in SERPs. I also changed the meta description and meta title as the ctr was poor but there wasn''t that many impressions either. It is a competitive keyword organically so maybe the collection page's authority is just not good enough compared to the competitors hence why they are choosing the home page as it has higher page authority however this still is not helpful to searchers who land on home page. Does anyone have any ideas of what else I can do to get google to rank the ocllection page higher for the keyword instead of home page?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | TZ19820 -
Duplicate Content That Isn't Duplicated
In Moz, I am receiving multiple messages saying that there is duplicate page content on my website. For example, these pages are being highlighted as duplicated: https://www.ohpopsi.com/photo-wallpaper/made-to-measure/pop-art-graffiti/farm-with-barn-and-animals-wall-mural-3824 and https://www.ohpopsi.com/photo-wallpaper/made-to-measure/animals-wildlife/little-elephants-garden-seamless-pattern-wall-mural-3614. As you can see, both pages are different products, therefore I can't apply a 301 redirect or canonical tag. What do you suggest?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | e3creative0 -
SEO page descriptions on mobile - how to hide while preserving the juice for SEO?
Hi everybody, On our pages we have crafted good text paragraphs for SEO purposes. On desktop everything is fine but on mobile the paragraph of text pushes the main content really low on the page. Is there a way of hiding the text while preserving the SEO juices and not getting penalised by Google for spamming techniques? I'd appreciate any recommendations on how to deal with this. Thanks very much!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Firebox0 -
Rel=prev/next and canonical tags on paginated pages?
Hi there, I'm using rel="prev" and rel="next" on paginated category pages. On 1st page I'm also setting a canonical tag, since that page happens to get hits to an URL with parameters. The site also uses mobile version of pages on a subdomain. Here's what markup the 1st desktop page has: Here's what markup the 2nd desktop page has: Here's what markup the 1st MOBILE page has: Here's what markup the 2nd MOBILE page has: Questions: 1. On desktop pages starting from page 2 to page X, if these pages get traffic to their versions with parameters, will I'll have duplicate issues or the canonical tag on 1st page makes me safe? 2. Should I use canonical tags on mobile pages starting from page 2 to page X? Are there any better solutions of avoiding duplicate content issues?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | poiseo1 -
Big problem with duplicate page content
Hello! I am a beginner SEO specialist and a have a problem with duplicate pages content. The site I'm working on is an online shop made with Prestashop. The moz crawl report shows me that I have over 4000 duplicate page content. Two weeks ago I had 1400. The majority of links that show duplicate content looks like bellow:
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ana_g
http://www.sitename.com/category-name/filter1
http://www.sitename.com/category-name/filter1/filter2 Firstly, I thought that the filtres don't work. But, when I browse the site and I test it, I see that the filters are working and generate links like bellow:
http://www.sitename.com/category-name#/filter1
http://www.sitename.com/category-name#/filter1/filter2 The links without the # do not work; it messes up with the filters.
Why are the pages indexed without the #, thus generating me duplicate content?
How can I fix the issues?
Thank you very much!0 -
Can pop-ups cause duplicate content issues in product pages?
Normally for ecommerce clients that have 100's of products we advise for size guides, installation guides etc to be placed as downloadable PDF resources to avoid huge blocks of content on multiple product pages. If content was placed in a popup e.g. fancybox, across multiple product pages would this be read by Google as duplicate content? Examples for this could be: An affiliate site with mutiple prices for a product and pop-up store reviews A clothing site with care and size guides What would be the best practice or setup?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | shloy23-2945840 -
Meta NOINDEX... how long before Google drops dupe pages?
Hi, I have a lot of near dupe content caused by URL params - so I have applied: How long will it take for this to take effect? It's been over a week now, I have done some removal with GWT removal tool, but still no major indexed pages dropped. Any ideas? Thanks, Ben
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | bjs20100 -
Site less than 20 pages shows 1,400+ pages when crawled
Hello! I’m new to SEO, and have been soaking up as much as I can. I really love it, and feel like it could be a great fit for me – I love the challenge of figuring out the SEO puzzle, plus I have a copywriting/PR background, so I feel like that would be perfect for helping businesses get a great jump on their online competition. In fact, I was so excited about my newfound love of SEO that I offered to help a friend who owns a small business on his site. Once I started, though, I found myself hopelessly confused. The problem comes when I crawl the site. It was designed in Wordpress, and is really not very big (part of my goal in working with him was to help him get some great content added!) Even though there are only 11 pages – and 6 posts – for the entire site, when I use Screaming Frog to crawl it, it sees HUNDREDS of pages. It stops at 500, because that is the limit for their free version. In the campaign I started here at SEOmoz, and it says over 1,400 pages have been crawled…with something like 900 errors. Not good, right? So I've been trying to figure out the problem...when I look closer in Screaming Frog, I can see that some things are being repeated over and over. If I sort by the Title, the URLs look like they’re stuck in a loop somehow - one line will have /blog/category/postname…the next line will have /blog/category/category/postname…and the next line will have /blog/category/category/category/postname…and so on, with another /category/ added each time. So, with that, I have two questions Does anyone know what the problem is, and how to fix it? Do professional SEO people troubleshoot this kind of stuff all of the time? Is this the best place to get answers to questions like that? And if not, where is? Thanks so much in advance for your help! I’ve enjoyed reading all of the posts that are available here so far, it seems like a really excellent and helpful community...I'm looking forward to the day when I can actually answer the questions!! 🙂
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | K.Walters0