Can Page Content & Description Have Same Content?
-
I'm studying my crawl report and there are several warnings regarding missing meta descriptions.
My website is built in WordPress and part of the site is a blog.
Several of these missing description warnings are regarding blog posts and I was wondering if I am able to copy the first few lines of content of each of the posts to put in the meta description, or would that be considered duplicate content?
Also, there are a few warnings that relate to blog index pages, e.g. http://www.iainmoran.com/2013/02/ - I don't know if I can even add a description of these as I think they are dynamically created?
While on the subject of duplicate content, if I had a sidebar with information on several of the pages (same info) while the content would be coming from a WP Widget, would this still be considered duplicate content and would Google penalise me for it?
Would really appreciate some thoughts on this,please.
Thanks,
Iain.
-
Thanks, Tom - I'll have a go at that and make an actual robots.txt file and upload it.
It is odd though and when I was creating my WP pages there are Yoast Options for each page - several of them I set to noindex, though looking at the virtual robots.txt, these isn't the case. My file just has:
User-agent: *
Disallow: /wp-admin/
Disallow: /wp-includes/Thanks again for all your help,
Iain.
-
http://wordpress.org/support/topic/robotstxt-file-4
Thats about the only thing I can find on it. Hope you can gleam some use out of it. Seem rather complicated for such an easy task.
-
Cheers Tom,
Yeah it is rather strange. There doesn't appear to be another plugin that should be causing this. Yoast is certainly the one relating to SEO.
Iain.
-
I think this is where I run out of useful things to add. That seems very odd to me.
Do you have any other plugins active that might be producing a robots.txt file?
-
Thanks Tom,
When I click Edit Files in Yoast it says:
"If you had a robots.txt file and it was editable, you could edit it from here."And yet, I do have one (albeit it appears a virtual one) as it can be viewed here:
http://www.iainmoran.com/robots.txtIf I try to view the site files on the server, via FTP or CPanel, there is no robots.txt file there!
I appear to be using the latest version of Yoast.
Thanks,
Iain.
-
Hey Iain,
There is a way to edit the file with Yoast. It should have a section called Edit Files when you click on the "SEO" part on the left hand side of your Wordpress dashboard. Once in there you should see robots.txt on the top. If you dont see it you might need to upgrade to the newest version of Yoast.
Thanks,
Tom
-
Thanks so much for your reply, Tom - very useful indeed!
I'm using Yoast SEO for WordPress, which apparently creates a virtual robots.txt and I can't see anyway to edit it as such. Unlike the posts themselves, which I can set to "noindex", the dynamic pages I cannot.
Unless I make my own robots.txt and upload it to my server, but I'm concerned that it will confuse matters and conflict with the one created/managed by Yoast?
Thanks again,
Iain.
-
Hey Iain,
I would do custom meta descriptions if possible. Meta descriptions are generally used to "sell" the content. They dont have any effect on ranking and if you dont feel like adding custom content to them, Google will just display the first content the page automatically. It is not considered duplicate content.
I would also probably get rid of those blog index pages from your xml sitemap and no index them if you can with meta robots or robots.txt. Those will produce duplicate content and you really want to drive people and bots to the posts themselves. Not the index pages of the posts.
I also wouldnt worry about the sidebar. As long as you are providing a decent amount of unique content on each page you will be fine.
Hope that helps.
Site looks good!
Tom
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
-
Email and landing page duplicate content issue?
Hi Mozers, my question is, if there is a web based email that goes to subscribers, then if they click on a link it lands on a Wordpress page with very similar content, will Google penalize us for duplicate content? If so is the best workaround to make the email no index no follow? Thanks!
Technical SEO | | CalamityJane770 -
150+ Pages of URL Parameters - Mass Duplicate Content Issue?
Hi we run a large e-commerce site and while doing some checking through GWT we came across these URL parameters and are now wondering if we have a duplicate content issue. If so, we are wodnering what is the best way to fix them, is this a task with GWT or a Rel:Canonical task? Many of the urls are driven from the filters in our category pages and are coming up like this: page04%3Fpage04%3Fpage04%3Fpage04%3F (See the image for more). Does anyone know if these links are duplicate content and if so how should we handle them? Richard I7SKvHS
Technical SEO | | Richard-Kitmondo0 -
How can my homepage have 2 meta descriptions?
Hi all, When googling our company, I see our main page pop up with 2 different meta descriptions, depending on the search query. The situation
Technical SEO | | NHA_DistanceLearning
The search query 'nha' (on google.nl) returns the main page with a meta description that looks like a random grab from the code by Google itself, starting with 'Ik volg een cursus bij de NHA...' The search query 'nha.nl' (on google.nl) returns the main page with the proper meta description, starting with 'Aanbieder van thuisstudies met onder meer MBO-opleidingen...'. So yeah, I'd like to have the main page only appear with the proper meta description, the latter one. We did have a redirect issue (duplicate homepages) a few weeks ago and programming fixed it. Could this have something to do with a redirect? I'd love to hear your thoughts. Thanks!0 -
Does google like Category pages or pages with lots of Products on them?
We are having an issue with getting Google to rank the page we want. To have this page http://www.jakewilson.com/c/52/-/346/Cruiser-Motorcycle-Tires rank for the key word Cruiser Motorcycle Tires; however, this page http://www.jakewilson.com/t/52/-/343/752/Cruiser-Motorcycle-Tires is ranking instead and it has less links and page authority according to site explorer and it is farther down in the hierarchy. I am wondering if google just likes pages that have actual products on them instead of a page leading to the page with all the products. Thoughts?
Technical SEO | | DoRM0 -
Why are pages linked with URL parameters showing up as separate pages with duplicate content?
Only one page exists . . . Yet I link to the page with different URL parameters for tracking purposes and for some reason it is showing up as a separate page with duplicate content . . . Help? rpcIZ.png
Technical SEO | | BlueLinkERP0 -
Determining When to Break a Page Into Multiple Pages?
Suppose you have a page on your site that is a couple thousand words long. How would you determine when to split the page into two and are there any SEO advantages to doing this like being more focused on a specific topic. I noticed the Beginner's Guide to SEO is split into several pages, although it would concentrate the link juice if it was all on one page. Suppose you have a lot of comments. Is it better to move comments to a second page at a certain point? Sometimes the comments are not super focused on the topic of the page compared to the main text.
Technical SEO | | ProjectLabs1 -
Implications of multiple page descriptions?
Are there any implications of using two page description properties, i.e. meta name="<a class="attribute-value">description</a>" and meta property="<a class="attribute-value">og:description</a>"
Technical SEO | | Nathan.Smith0 -
Redirecting Entire Microsite Content to Main Site Internal Pages?
I am currently working on improving site authority for a client site. The main site has significant authority, but I have learned that the company owns several other resource-focused microsites which are stagnant, but which have accrued significant page authority of their own (thought still less than the main site). Realizing the fault in housing good content on a microsite rather than the main site, my thought is that I can redirect the content of the microsites to internal pages on the main site as a "Resources" section. I am wondering a: if this is a good idea and b: the best way to transfer site authority from these microsites. I am also wondering how to organize the content and if, for example, an entire microsite domain (e.g. microsite.com) should in fact be redirected to internal resource pages (e.g. mainsite.com/resources). Any input would be greatly appreciated!
Technical SEO | | RightlookCreative1