How important are unique titles and descriptions?
-
Hi there,
I've recently started working on a very large travel website. One of my main duties is to get it rankings for certain terms (which it is't at the moment, at all!)
A large proportion of the website is dynamic, meaning that the pages, and URLs are produced using sessions. I've already enquired with the company who provide the website about how I can get unique meta data for each page on our website. They came back and said it can be done for the static pages, but not for the dynamic pages. This leaves me with about thousands of pages with duplicated meta data. Not at all ideal.
I was just wondering how damaging this is likely to be to the SEO of my site. Am I going to be able to achieve rankings even with this issue? Or do I need to get it sorted ASAP?
Thanks
-
Wow! Thanks for all the replies!
Funny you should mention that Stephan, thats the exact same solution I put to our providers. Their working on a slightly different solution at the moment, but thats my fallback option.
My main issue is that there would be so many duplicate URLs (tens of thousands!), which the Search Engines would undoubtedly frown upon.
I'll keep you all updated on my progress!
Thanks again
-
It is very important. We also have dynamic pages... a ton of them. However we found a solution by bringing other data already on the page into the description and title. Let's say that each page offers a different vacation package. You should see if the name of the package can be imported into the title and description. Since the data is already there... it can be done.
Come up with some strategy that works with the data you have. For example... with our product pages, we did something like: [product title] - save 35 - 70% at Sierra Trading Post.
-
I agree with Andre, you should definitely go for unique titles and descriptions. Think about your users too: they will see the title tag and possibly the meta description on the SERPS, and it greatly influences a user's decision whether or not to click your search result. You might still achieve rankings without them, but you will not be able to use the full potential of the site.
-
We have just launched a new Travel website aswell. (4 months in the making)
Each page has its own targeted keywords so Meta Descriptions and Title tags for your destination pages are important!!
We found a plugin that allows us to change the "template" for the destination pages.
Tell those guys who built your site that not being able to edit dynamic pages is NOT cool and they need to make a plan!
If you dont put them in, google may decide to rank your home page for keywords instead of the correct tour/product page.
GREG
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 to add titles to Pardot landing pages
I have 5 URLs that are "missing titles" however, all 5 are landing pages that were created in Pardot. how would I go about adding the missing title? Would I need to add it on our website platform or in Pardot?
Technical SEO | | cbriggs0 -
Breadcrumbs on Mobile How important are they for SEO?
Due to Poor unsightly look of breadcrumbs and the space it takes up above the fold we only employ breadcrumbs on our desktop version. Breadcrumbs are hidden from view on mobile version. However as mobile first indexing is now in play what technical SEO impacts will this have? one thing that comes to mind is crawling deeper pages where breadcrumbs made them accessible in less than 3 link clicks? But i am unsure now of the impacts of not having breadcrumbs visible for mobile version of our site.
Technical SEO | | oceanstorm0 -
Open Graph Meta Description...
Does my html meta description tag have to be the same as my Open Graph meta description? I'm having problems pulling through my meta description into Google SERPs and I wondered if its because my 'OG' data is not consistent? Thanks Guys, Kay
Technical SEO | | eLab_London0 -
Seeing URL Slugs as search result titles
I've been seeing some search results for my site that look like the first result here, where the URL slug is used as SERP title: https://drive.google.com/a/fitsmallbusiness.com/file/d/0B37y4RslpuY-a0hQYjlJQ0NxeFJicDF6RVlURFVSNFN0aGhB/view?usp=sharing The article title (and Yoast snippet title) are both "28 Press Release Examples From The Pros", but for some reason I'm seeing "press-release-examples" in the search results. I've seen this for multiple articles, and I see it now and then with different articles. I'm aware that Google often changes the titles in search results, but it seems very weird to me that they would opt for just the URL slug here. Thoughts? Has anyone else seen this issue? Any idea what might be causing this? All help much appreciated.
Technical SEO | | davidwaring0 -
Meta Description
Working with a business that is having some real issues. They had some client information that was showing up in the meta description. Personal phone numbers for example. Our developers removed all the information from the pages in question two days ago, but we are still seeing the info in the meta description. Any idea how long this will take to be recrawled and fixed? Anything I can do to get recrawled sooner? Also, this is only happening in Bing/Yahoo and not in Google. Thanks for any help you can provide!
Technical SEO | | PGD20110 -
Duplicate titles / canonical / Drupal
I have a site where there are several duplicate titles, looks like mainly based on a parameterized vs. non-parameterized version of the page. I have what appears to be a proper canonical tag, but webmaster still complains of both duplicate titles & meta descriptions. A good example (taken out of webmaster report for http://igottadrive.com) is: /driving-tips/mirror-setup-and-use /driving-tips/mirror-setup-and-use?inline=true If I look at the page (in either case) there appears to be a correct canonical tag pointing to the base case. However, for some reason google is either ignoring the canonical or its not properly done. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.
Technical SEO | | uwaim20120 -
Why has Google removed meta descriptions from SERPS?
One of my clients' sites has just been redesigned with lots of new URLs added. So the 301 redirections have been put in place and most of the new URLs have now been indexed. BUT Google is still showing all the old URLs in the SERPS and even worse it only displays the title tag. The meta description is not shown, no rich snippet, no text, nothing below the title. This is proving disastrous as visitors are not clicking on a result with no description. I have to assume its got something to do with the redirection, but why is it not showing the descriptions? I've checked the old URLs and he meta description is definitely still in the code, but Google is choosing not to show it. I've never seen this before so I'm struggling for an answer. I'd like to know why or how this is happening, and if it can be resolved. I realise that this may be resolved when Google stops showing all the old URLs but there's no telling how long that will take (can it be speeded up?)
Technical SEO | | Websensejim0 -
What pages of my site does Google rank as the most important?
If I type site:youtube.com into Google, are the results listed by what Google considers to be the most important pages of the site? If I change my sitemap should this order change? Thanks!
Technical SEO | | Seaward-Group0