Missing Meta Description Tag - Wordpress Tag
-
I am going through my crawl diagonostics issues and I have lots of "Missing Meta Description Tags". However when I look at the url's they are Wordpress Tags, which do not have a meta description.
Shall I just ignore these errors or should I find a way to add a meta description? Is it important?
-
You can also add meta descriptions to the tags individually in WP. Just go to "Posts" >
"Tags" and then edit each tag to have a meta description.On a side note, in a wordpress site, it is really not a good idea to index your "Tag Pages". Sure 3 years ago you would have wanted to because Search Engines put more value on how many pages your website has. In 2013 it has a number of negative consequences that Google especially doesn't approve of. First it adds a ton of pages to your site too quickly - Google likes things to grow at a common rate. (If you have a team of 30 people blogging 5 blogs a day Google will see that and be ok with more tags, but if your adding one blog a day and 25 pages are being created thats a problem) Second, if you add one blog and give it 5 new tags that have never been used before, Google will see 5 new pages with the exact same content on it. You will see these errors on you SEOmoz Campaign report. Lastly, its hard to control the meta descriptors though easier with a SEO program.
Leaving out your Tags but indexing your Categories may be a better option, but of course that draws the question, why use tags at all right? Well in the search engine world, its best to create for the user and not the search engine. So tags are used to help the user find other articles or blogs like the one they have landed on. In the last 5 years, tags were about creating huge amounts of pages but now days you have to weigh the good over the bad.
-this is my opinion and not that of SEOmoz.-
-
You can create a template for the titles and metadescriptions of the tags also in Yoast - go to the section of titles, and then in the taxonomies section, you can create a template for titles and meta descriptions. Scroll down to the bottom of the page - you'll see what you can dynamically insert in your template text.
-
Thanks for your reply. Funny you mention the yoast seo plugin. I installed it earlier today. Your right it is good.
I do want meta descriptions on my tags as they are getting picked up by search engines. Do you know how I can add them in Wordpress as I can find the option?
-
I just want to back up Mark Ginsberg's suggestion to you. I currently manage several WP sites and I would not do without Yoast on any of the. Not saying there is not other good SEO plugins available, but Yoast is straight forward, yet powerful. WP without an SEO plugin can be a mess, and limiting what is allowed to index will certainly help you by leaps and bounds.
-
If you're finding these tags are missing meta descriptions, that means they are pages that don't have meta descriptions. This points to a larger issue - do you want each page being created by Wordpress for each tag you use to be indexed by the search engines? Are these high quality pages you'd want a user to land on? Do they provide value? If not, you don't want them to be indexed. You can use a Wordpress plugin to control indexation of these tag pages - Yoast's SEO plugin, http://yoast.com/wordpress/seo/, besides for being awesome, will control this for you. Install and then go the indexation section, and from there, you can control what is indexed and set the tags to not be indexed.
You can do lots of other stuff with the plugin, and I definitely recommend installing it either way.
Hope this helps and let me know if you have any issues with it.
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
-
Switched from Wix to Wordpress dreaded hashtag URL
Recently took over managing a site for a non-profit which was using the dreaded Wix. Switched over to Wordpress but now Google still has the old URL's with the hashtag. Can't forward them in .htaccess and don't want to add javascript for fear of slowing down load time. I found a solution that seems like it will take hours and hours of work. I found the solution at http://www.thedriversgarage.com/web-technology/redirecting-hashbang-urls-wix-urls/ but it seems like it would take hours with all the URL's. I submitted an XML sitemap in Google webmaster tools. My question is, how serious could this effect SEO for my site? Google accepted the new sitemap but still has the old URL's in SERP. How long does this generally take to remove? Will the hashtag URL's penalize the site for duplicate content? If so is there a way to tell Google the homepage without hashtags is the page with original content? Sort of like the rel=canonical tag which I know wont work as the hashtag URL's all redirect to the homepage so they will all have the tag. Does Google ignore the hashtag? Could there even be a benefit to this, possibly the homepage getting more page authority due to the redirects? How serious is this? Thanks in advancing.
Web Design | | limited70 -
Should Blog Category Archive URLs be Set to "No-Index" in Wordpress?
It appears that Google Webmaster Tools is listing about 120 blog archives URLs in Google Index>Index Status that should not be listed. Our site map contains 650 pages, but Google shows 860. Pages like: <colgroup><col width="464"></colgroup>
Web Design | | Kingalan1
| http://www.nyc-officespace-leader.com/blog/category/manhattan-office-space | With Titles Like: <colgroup><col width="454"></colgroup>
| Manhattan Office Space Archives - Metro Manhattan Office Space | Are listed when in the Rogerbot crawl report for the site. How can we remove such pages from Google Webmaster Tools, Index Status? Our site map shows about 650 pages, yet Google show these extra pages. We would prefer that they not be indexed. Note that these pages do not appear when we run a site:www.nyc-officespace-leader.com search. The site has suffered a drop in ranking since May and we feel it prudent to keep Google from indexing useless URLs. Before May 650 pages showed on the Webmaster Tools Index status, and suddenly in early June when we upgraded the site the index grew by about 175 pages. I suspect the 120 blog archives URLs may have something to do with it. How can we get them removed? Can we set them to "No-Index", or should the robot text be used to remove them? Or can some type of removal request be made to Google? My developers have been struggling with this issue since early June. The bloat on the site is about 175 URLs not on the site map. Is there any go to authority on this issue (it is apparently rather complicated) that can provide a definitive answer? Thanks!!
Alan0 -
Is the 'too many links' caused by the tags?
Hello Just got my seomoz report and decided I better start takiling things. Got a lot of 'too many links' on the report. I don't have control over website design and before I talk to designer I thought I should have a bit of an handle on what I am talking about. I've taken one page that has 483 links. Is this caused by the tags box and would it be a good idea to have it removed? http://commonwealthcontractors.com/uk-visas/tier-2-general-visas-formerly-uk-work-permits/ Regards Niamh
Web Design | | Niamh20 -
‘80-90% of SEO already done for you in Wordpress’ Am I missing something?
Hi there, I’m looking for some feedback on a statement made on my Facebook Page re Wordpress and SEO. Please understand I wouldn’t class myself as an expert but I am competent and achieve satisfactory results for clients, more so since becoming a SEOmoz Pro user, I’ve just had some great results for a client using SEOmoz guidelines in ‘On Page SEO Reports’ thank you very much! A comment however made on my FB page has got my interest…. “as you (kn)no(w) google loves WP and will get listed quicker as 80 to 90% of your SEO is already done” Does Wordpress (or Joomla for that matter mentioned in the same conversation) have some SEO advantages that Google loves as the poster would have me believe, can I save time and effort working in word press from an SEO point of view? I use the age old techniques of targeting key phrases and words and distributing them accordingly. Creating internal link structures with ‘key worded anchor text’ etc before embarking on any off page SEO. Do any of you vastly experienced (in comparison to me) SEO folk have any insight into what this statement refers to? I did not gather any references to SEO advantages in Wordpress or Joomla in the Enge and Fishkin et al book The Art of SEO, or any of the other books I’ve read, to develop my knowledge on SEO for the benefit of my clients and of course my pocket. J
Web Design | | JemRobinson0 -
What are some of the best website hosting platforms for Wordpress?
I'm looking for a new hosting provider and have been told to find one that specializes in Wordpress hosting because of higher page speed load times, etc.. Can anyone recommend a couple of Wordpress Hosting providers
Web Design | | webestate0 -
Is there a Consultant out there to help convert C#.net functions into PHP Wordpress functions?
We are going through a transition from SiteFinity (C# .net windows environment) to WordPress (PHP Linux environment). We currently have custom forms that make calls to webservices and also store data into SQL Server tables. Not sure how to do this in PHP and could use some help. We are located in Irvine, CA. We would prefer someone onsite, but can also work with someone remote if we must. Time is of the essence. Thanks.
Web Design | | balboafinance0 -
Google Analtyics Conversion Tracking for Wordpress Life Coaching Site
Hello, How do I do conversion tracking for Google Analytics for this site: debidonner(dot)com She has a 'Thank You' page after you return from Paypal Thanks!
Web Design | | BobGW0 -
Wordpress SEO Change of Structure
Hi, I have a Wordpress SEO Question. I ran the SEOMOZ checker on my website and it discovered roughly 70 of my 250 blogs had a URL length problem. I have removed the year and month from the WP structure as I read elsewhere that it is not important. The blogs displayed as follows: domain.com/blog/2011/02/contents-of-the-blog and the new structure is: domain.com/blog/contents-of-the-blog I have resubmitted the new structure to Google Webmaster Tools XML and updating the on-page sitemap on my main site. My blog was cached on 25<sup>th</sup> October and seems to be caching every 7 days, my website cached on the 24th and I wonder if I should do any follow up work to ensure the content gets crawled properly. a) Individually 301 redirect the old URLs to the new. b) Individual Canonical links for each. c) Adding the old pages to the robots file and disallowing. Any advice would be greatly appreciated.
Web Design | | tdsnet0