Same Meta Description on all pages harmful?
-
As the question title suggests, is it harmful (on Google) for a site to use the same meta description sitewide? On every single page.
If not, is there any particular benefit to crafting a unique meta description for every page besides CTR on google searches.
What do you think?
Thanks in advance!
-
Thanks for the response. Appreciate it.
You are absolutely right, it is enough reason. I was just curious to see other reasons to why having unique meta descriptions is the way to go, from someone more experienced!
-
Isn't increased CTR on searches reason enough?
Many different ideas have been discussed regarding meta descriptions. Overall, most argue Google does not factor meta descriptions into rankings.
Personally, I think it would probably still factor in as a quality signal since the text used by Google often changes based on a particular search. If the description doesn't fit the keyword phrase and/or content, Google will often look for other content to use instead. For that reason alone, I would use a different meta description for every page (at the very least, for every page I want indexed) and I would make sure the description fit the content.
-
In my experience it is not harmful. But as you said it is really important to improve your CTR.
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 pages
Hi I have recently signed up to Moz Pro and the first crawl report on my wordpress site has brought up some duplicate content issues. I don't know what to do with this data! The original page : http://www.dwliverpoolphotography.co.uk/blog/ and the duplicate content page : http://www.dwliverpoolphotography.co.uk/author/david/ If anyone can point me to a resource or explain what I need to do thanks! David.
On-Page Optimization | | WallerD0 -
Meta Title, Meta Description in Mobile Version
Hello all! We all know that having a responsive theme, with the same URL as the desktop version is what search engines prefer to best index our sites. But how is it when it comes to Meta Titles and Meta Description. Should we use different Metas for mobile visitors? Regards!
On-Page Optimization | | NelsonF0 -
I do not want all my META descriptions to be unique.
Hi, I have maybe 20 categories (new) that I really like to have the same Meta description for all of them. The category names call out the use of their respective products. but, all of these categories are related to a much bigger global initiative. I don't have enough space in the title to discuss the individual terms as well as the broader project, so I would like the META to say something like "Products related to <this thing="" my="" customers="" care="" about="">from</this> However, I am extremely paranoid about adding 20-25 meta descriptions that are identical, because Google. Am I overthinking this and being paranoid about Panguin and Penda?
On-Page Optimization | | reallygoodstuff0 -
View all Page for Product Overview Pages
Hi everybody! We have an ecommerce site with product overview pages, where sometimes there are hundreds of products listed. Usually, we just display 30 and have a button where users can click to see 30 more - or all products listed at once. This is the overview page (as indexed in google): http://www.geschenkidee.ch/aussergewoehnliches.html
On-Page Optimization | | zeepartner
And this is the view-all page: http://www.geschenkidee.ch/aussergewoehnliches.html#all What should I do here? The product overview page will hardly generate more traffic by listing all products (because the overview page will rank for generic keywords, while the product keyword searches will be referred to the specific product pages themselves). I was originally thinking of using rel=canonical pointing to the view-all page. But this would just lead to longer load time. Should we just leave those overview pages or is there a best practice for how to deal with such pages? Thanks for your thoughts on this!0 -
Pages with duplicate meta descriptions.
So I have similar items that is being recognized as duplicated meta description. What should I do? Here is couple of items.
On-Page Optimization | | DiamondJewelryEmpire0 -
What are the benefits of targeting one keyword phrase per page vs. multiple keywords per page
What are the benefits of optimizing a page for one keyword phrase versus a group of similar keywords, like this one that Rand posted on another blog entry http://bit.ly/7LzTxY: Ted Baker Ted Baker London Ted Baker Clothing Ted Baker Mens Ted Baker Mens Clothing Ted Baker Mens Collection
On-Page Optimization | | EricVallee340