Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
Meta Description for ALL my Posts is Being Overwritten!
-
Every single one of my posts meta descriptions are being overritten with the same meta description!
I use Yoast and have proper meta descriptions in my posts, but something seems to be overriding them.
Any idea what could be causing this?
Thank you!!!
- Mike
-
Hey Mike. Not to fret, this is actually a common silly mistake in theme development. The meta description shouldn't be set in WordPress theme because that is handled in the wp_head function. This function is where Yoast, and other plugins, hook into to deliver all the SEO optimized meta and header tags.
-
This is wrong, but right. This is a theme problem. The blog description is a description for the blog website as a whole, and not a description for the page. In Wordpress, you should not set a meta description explicitly in the theme file. That's the job of the wp_head, especially if you are using an SEO plugin to manage your descriptions. It's a common mistake that is easily remedied as evidenced by his reply.
-
The string 'get_bloginfo('description')' spawns the blog description stored in wordpress under settings. But that shoud'nt cause issues with different setup descriptions per page while using a SEO plugin on wordpress. It's more of a theme issue i think because normally that shoud'nt happen.
I woud'nt worry alot about it either; google tends to ignore the description sometimes too and focusses on the actual content on page.
-
Thanks for all the responses!
I did remove the code and it seems to have solved the problem. Now I just don't know if any other different issues could have popped up from removing that code. So the problem seems to be fixed - I'm just sitting a bit in the unknown in terms of if the change had any other unwanted repurcussions.
- Mike
-
Yes and by removing that shortcode you completely remove the description from the blog. But a description is'nt something google takes into account alot now these days. It can actively read the content on your website or page, and align that within search. I mean i have sites that are completely ignored due to the description tag.
It's like meta name keywords all over again.
@Naturalsociety, if you switch the theme to something temporarily, does it appear back again? If so; you have a theme issue.
-
Sounds like a WordPress issue. I suspect there is a meta description defined in your theme file. Check that isn't the case.
It will look like this or very similar:
get_bloginfo('description')
Get rid of the whole meta tag that contains this php code.
If you are unsure how to find this, it will most likely be in your theme's header file. You can find this by going to the theme's folder and look for header.php.
You can also do this through the WordPress Dashboard > Appearance > Theme Editor. On the right hand side select the "Theme Header".
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
-
Best way to handle Breadcrumbs for Blog Posts in multiple categories?
The site in question uses Wordpress. They have a Resources section that is broken into two categories (A or B). Underneath each of these categories is 5 or 6 subcategories. The structure looks like this: /p/main-category-a/subcategory/blog-post-name /p/main-category-b/subcategory/blog-post-name All posts have a main category, but other posts often have multiple subcategories while some posts also fall into both main categories. What would be the easiest or most effective way to auto-populate the breadcrumb based on from where the person reached the blog post? So for example, a way to set Home -> Main Category -> Subcategory 1 as the breadcrumb if they reach it from the Subcategory 1 landing page. Or is this not possible and we should just set the breadcrumb manually based on where we feel it best lives? Thanks.
Technical SEO | | Alces0 -
Alt text and itemprop description
I want to optimise the logo on our site. Our developers have presently got the site logo code like this: 601 character description, no keywords 1. How best to use the alt text and description? 2. Do I concentrate on alt text? Isn't the 601 character description:
Technical SEO | | abisti2
a) too long, and
b) an opportunity to add relevant keywords again, like the alt text?0 -
Should we change the publish date in WordPress when updating a post?
Hi everyone, We're going through some of our old posts in our WordPress blog and updating them, adding new information, new links, and photos. My question: If we update the posts significantly, should we also update the "published" date to today? If we only correct some typos or a dead link, we don't touch the date. However, if we've done some real work on the post, we'd like to update the published date in order to bring it to the top of our blog feed and draw new attention to the post. However, I'm a little nervous that this could be seen by Google as spammy, as it's not technically a new post and the URL already exists in Google's index of our site. Here's an example of a post that was published several years ago and then updated a few week's ago with new information (and a new date stamp): http://www.eurocheapo.com/blog/barcelona-tip-five-cheap-eats-under-e6.html Any thoughts on this? Thanks, Tom
Technical SEO | | TomNYC0 -
Phone Number In Meta Description
People are more likely to call us, than email us. However, if they're using a mobile device, there's a click to call button on that site. My question is this: google does not include our phone number in our meta description. I could try to get the description changed, but it doesn't seem like it would make that big of a deal for just the desktop site. Am I missing something about the importance of the phone number on a desktop site? Any experience with this situation? Thanks, Ruben
Technical SEO | | KempRugeLawGroup3 -
Meta Description VS Rich Snippets
Hello everyone, I have one question: there is a way to tell Google to take the meta description for the search results instead of the rich snippets? I already read some posts here in moz, but no answer was found. In the post was said that if you have keywords in the meta google may take this information instead, but it's not like this as i have keywords in the meta tags. The fact is that, in this way, the descriptions are not compelling at all, as they were intended to be. If it's not worth for ranking, so why google does not allow at least to have it's own website descriptions in their search results? I undestand that spam issues may be an answer, but in this way it penalizes also not spammy websites that may convert more if with a much more compelling description than the snippets. What do you think? and there is any way to fix this problem? Thanks!
Technical SEO | | socialengaged
Eugenio0 -
Missing meta descriptions from Google SERPs
Hullo all, I run an e-commerce website and hence have a lot of product category/sub-category pages to handle. Despite giving each of these category pages meta descriptions, in the Google SERPs, a lot of these descriptions don't show up fully. Rather, only half the text that I'd inputed as my meta desc. shows up; the other half has generic stuff from that page given. I've attached a screen shot to give you an example of what comes up in the SERPs. Could you please tell me what exactly is the problem? Is it a coding issue? Or has Google not crawled that page? Need help asap! Thank you in advance! aE9RKXJ
Technical SEO | | suchde0 -
Empty Meta Robots Directive - Harmful?
Hi, We had a coding update and a side-effect of that was that our directive was emptied, in other words it now reads as: on all of the site. I've since noticed that Google's cache date on all of the pages - at least, the ones I tested - have a Cached date of no later than 17 December '12 - that's the Monday after the directive was removed on mass. So, A, does anyone have solid evidence of an empty directive causing problems? Past experience, Matt Cutts, Fishkin quote, etc. And then B - It seems fairly well correlated but, does my entire site's homogenous Cached date point to this tag removal? Or is it fairly normal to have a particular cache date across a large site (we're a large ecommerce site). Our site: http://www.zando.co.za/ I'm having the directive reinstated as soon as Dev permitting. And then, for extra credit, is there a way with Google's API, or perhaps some other tool, to run an arbitrary list and retrieve Cached dates? I'd want to do this for diagnosis purposes and preferably in a way that OK with Google. I'd avoid CURLing for the cached URL and scraping out that dates with BASH, or any such kind of thing. Cheers,
Technical SEO | | RocketZando0 -
Why crawl error "title missing or empty" when there is already "title and meta desciption" in place?
I've been getting 73 "title missing or empty" warnings from SEOMOZ crawl diagnostic. This is weird as I've installed yoast wordpress seo plugin and all posts do have title and meta description. But why the results here.. can anyone explain what's happening? Thanks!! Here are some of the links that are listed with "title missing, empty". Almost all our blog posts were listed there. http://www.gan4hire.com/blog/2011/are-you-here-for-good/ http://www.gan4hire.com/blog/2011/are-you-socially-awkward/
Technical SEO | | JasonDGreat
MaeM3.png TLcD8.png
0