Unfamiliar Meta Description Tags
-
I'm working with a client who uses a CMS which loads meta tags into their site through its backend. On-page I see this in the source:
-
Hi There
Any luck with this? What CMS are you using? Most CMS's allow editing of this sort of thing. If not, as others have suggested you could see if the descriptions show up in something like Screaming Frog or even just a simple header checker like http://urivalet.com/
-
When you say you see that on-page, do you mean when you look at the source inside the CMS, or on the actual webpage?
If it is the CMS, I agree, don't worry about it. When I first started with the CMS I am using now, I got very upset when I saw image links that looked like this: src="~/media/46166ADB93F248DDB7AF5C6CC8BD479C.ashx
I wanted easy-to-read links with appropriate keywords!
After wasting most of a day working on "fixing" them, I found out that once you get to the actual live webpage, everything looked fine. So I had to spend the better part of another day changing them back. [That is what you get for messing with objects.]
-
Mike, the added id=ctl08_hm content is appended by the CMS it seems. It's not a choice made by the client or myself
-
Hello,
You should still be able to access the page to figure out the meta description that has been officially entered. Also, was that an example? Why would your meta description be id=ctl08_hm?
Thanks,
- Mike
-
As far as you also include the name="description" and its value in the "content" attribute, having an ID on a Meta Tag won't probably avoid it from being correctly read by Google althought it is not W3C compliant. According to HTML specification, the meta element cannot have that ID attribute: The only valid attributes for meta tags are:
- name = name [CS]
This attribute identifies a property name. This specification does not list legal values for this attribute. - content = cdata [CS]
This attribute specifies a property's value. This specification does not list legal values for this attribute. - scheme = cdata [CS]
This attribute names a scheme to be used to interpret the property's value (see the section on profiles for details). - http-equiv = name [CI]
This attribute may be used in place of the name attribute. HTTP servers use this attribute to gather information for HTTP response message headers.
Also, you can include:
lang (language information), dir (text direction)Do you know why do you include that ID and how to remove it if it has no use?
- name = name [CS]
-
It looks like the added portion is going to prevent recognition for the overall meta description tag. Is this a custom tag being used to identify products / pages internally to the CMS? For meta description, you'll want to use the syntax:
-
Hi there
I would search the page in Google and see if the meta description is reflection. I would also make sure that ScreamingFrog is seeing those as well.
I have had clients that used this and it worked, so I wouldn't be too concerned. But I would definitely search and see if it appears. If it doesn't, I would go with the standard method of implementation.
Hope this helps! Good luck!
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
-
Hidden H1 Tag on Image
Hi, In the page I'm working on, I encountered an tag in an image, rather than in a text form. Do you think it's an issue when it comes to SEO?
Technical SEO | | nerdieb
What do you suggest I should do if there is an issue? Keen to hear from you!0 -
My SERP meta description is displaying 315 characters...
Hi Mozzers, We have recently taken the #2 spot for our main keyword in Google UK serp. I just checked again and we have dropped to #4 and our meta description is no longer there as it has been replaced with some homepage content... 315 characters of homepage content right up to the full stop. I'm a little confused. A couple of our competitors meta descriptions are showing the same, extra long homepage text instead. Is there something totally normal and harmless causing this or do I need to be monitoring/changing something? Has Google made an update to allow for longer meta decs? Any advice appreciated! sWrBcuB.png
Technical SEO | | SanjidaKazi0 -
All META descriptions gone
Hi there, Since almost a week now, all of my optmized META descriptions has been gone in Google. The last few years Google has always shown all of the optimized META descriptions. My website is an ecommerce site (phone accessories) and all pages have its own unique content (url, text, title, description) and score well in Google. The META descriptions are created by using a template like this: At [brandname] you find lots of [variable category product] * USP 1 * USP 2 * USP 3 All META descriptions differ from each other only by the variable category product. Something tells me this is an effect of the Panda 4.0 update. I tested with a category page by replacing the META description for a 100% unique one. Then I asked Google (via Webmaster tools) to reindex the page. Today the new description got indexed. This means uniqueness is important. My question is: how do I get the optimized META descriptions back? Creating real unique descriptions (means not using a template) for every page is very hard for a webhop since all category pages have the same message to tell (only difference is the type of product), I want to use USP's, and META descriptions of all productpages have been lost too (over 15000 different products). Please help!
Technical SEO | | MarcelMoz
Thanks in advance. Marcel0 -
How to fix rel canonical tags?
Hello there, I am trying to fix the issues with my campaign and I am trying to fix Rel canonical issues. I tried to read a few blogs and other sources which talked about the Rel canonical but I am not able to understand why is Rel Canonical happening? I understand that http://elegancealways.com is not the same as http://elegancealways.com/about-us/ but then I cannot change the link as the link is correct. I read about 301 and 302 redirects. I do not understand that which link is correct then? The errors SEO MOZ is showing is what I am not able to understand as these links are correct. I need help here!! Thanks Vineeta qTc2a2H.png
Technical SEO | | vineeta0 -
Isnt it better to have headlines in H1 and H2 tags instead of p tags?
I am working with a simple site http://http://lightsigns.com/Uniko_Manufacturing_Limited.html They seek more SEO traffic. However, the two big headlines that read "Wholesale Supply to the Sign and Display Industries" which is on line 241 and 242 of the source code, its in a p tag, i.e. <p <span class="webkit-html-tag">style</p <span>="padding-top: 0pt; " class="paragraph_style_1">Wholesale Supply to the and <p <span class="webkit-html-tag">style</p <span>="padding-bottom: 0pt; " class="paragraph_style_1">Sign and Display Industries Likewise, the product titles are in p tags, also. For example, on the Slide-in Light Box product page, http://lightsigns.com/Slide_In_light_box.html , I have done keyword research and no one is using the words slide in light box.Plus, it is also a p tag, ie. line 43 reads style="padding-bottom: 0pt; padding-top: 0pt; " class="paragraph_style">Slide-in Light Box If I suggest that they make an H2 tag with SEO-optimized keywords such as Display Light Box - Slide-In LIght Box, would this indeed help SEO? In summary, is it correct to say that H1 and H2 tags are stronger signals to the search bots of what the page is about?
Technical SEO | | BridgetGibbons1 -
Negative Effect of Duplicate Title Tags
Hi guys, I'm trying to figure out if one my problems with search rankings might be a result of 2 of my main pages (home page and tier 2 page linked to main menu) have the same title and description tags. Let's say my keyword is 'building paper airplanes'. The url for my homepage is http://domain.com and the Title Tag is "Building Paper Airplanes I Domain". My tier 2 page url is http://domain.com/building-paper-airplanes and the Title tag is "Building Paper Airplanes I Domain". The home page is more of an introduction page before the user gets into the instructions on the tier 2 page. Can anybody advise if this might be having a negative affect on my search results for the search term 'building paper airplanes'? Thanks.
Technical SEO | | Rogs.SEO0 -
Google description showing latest post excerpt
In doing a search for our website, The Tech Block, I realized that our description is not showing what we have in our Yoast settings, but rather the content from the slider: http://d.pr/i/kGjB What can I do to fix this?
Technical SEO | | ttb0 -
Rel-canonical tag
Hi, I'm having some confusion with the rel-canonical tag. A few months ago we implemented the rel-canonical tag because we had many errors specifically duplicate page content come upon the SEOmoz web app (mostly because we use tracking code). I had asked what to do about this and was advised by the SEOmoz web app to implement the rel-canonical tag. However, when I'm working on the Keyword Optimizer Tool, it always checks off that I'm using the rel-canonical tag improperly, and then when I go into our sites' CMS for that page and uncheck "Use Canonical URL", the keyword optimizer tool up's my grade for that correction/that I've made an improvement. So my question is if the page I'm working on is the one I want search engines to find, should I not be using the Canonical URL tag? Should the Canonical URL tag only be used on URL's with the tracking code?
Technical SEO | | aircyclemegan0