Duplicated titles and meta descriptions
-
Hi,
Dealing with both my duplicated titles and meta descriptions i'm wondering if there's a "quick" win I could potentially implement asap.
A bit of background:
Say I've 4 pages structured that way:- domain.com/us/productA.html for the US
- domain.com/gb/productA.html the UK
- domain.com/fr/productA.html for France
- domain.com/de/productA.html For Germany
At the moment, both my page titles and meta-descriptions are duplicated all over the place for product A.
Title is reading "Product A - company name"
MD is a bit better, being translated in all 3 languages (En, Fr, DE). Therefore being the same for the US and for the UK.Ideally, I would get unique page titles and MD all over the place. However, due to time and resource constraints, I can't make it happen overnight.
So my questions are pretty simple:
1. Can I create a rule for page titles to be "Product A - country - company name" or similar? Would that be enough to make the page titles unique? Is there any value doing so?
2. Can I "localize" duplicate MD by simply naming the country? I assume it is not enough in this case as all the rest would be copy/pasted.Ideally speaking, both my page titles and MD would be completely unique but I can't afford doing so in the short term.
Thanks!
-
it can involve a lot of work, but every meta title every meta description should be unique to that page and written in a white hat way.
It can cost a lot for a copywriter to do this work, but it is well worth it as it can improve the CTR.
-
it can involve a lot of work, but every meta title every meta description should be unique to that page and written in a white hat way.
It can cost a lot for a copywriter to do this work, but it is well worth it as it can improve the CTR.
-
Thanks Kate, will do the best I can in the light of your answers.
But as you've probably understood by now, with quite limited resources. -
I know we are way too late for this, but why did your company decide to internationalize the site structure if you can't get localization resources. I would have suggested using cookies and JS to set the currency, etc.
Anyway to your questions:
Or am I chasing ghost and this rule won't change much in the eyes of Google and my ranking? You can implement the title rule above, but I don't think it is going to help much.
**I don't care so much if US content shows up in the UK in term of content though are eCommerce experts would be quite pissed off as it would biased reporting. **
I recommend setting up IP location detection. If the user SEEMS to be in a different country, ask them if they are from the other country and if they say yes, then redirect them there. Don't assume they are in a specific country though.
Focus on getting those resources, you won't make a big impact without them in a high competition area.
-
Hi Kate,
Thank you so much for your answer. Some clarifications on your points:
On the competition part, there is a fair bit of competition indeed. But is an interim solution possible whilst more resources get eventually unlocked next year? And by an interim solution, I'm referring to that page title rule I mentioned in my question.
Or am I chasing ghost and this rule won't change much in the eyes of Google and my ranking?I don't care so much if US content shows up in the UK in term of content though are eCommerce experts would be quite pissed off as it would biased reporting. From my point of view, the only issue is around currency if visitors then decide to purchase something.
Lastly, I can't do much when it comes to the duplicated content as I stated in a different question since there are no available resources to solve this from a content perspective nor from a site architecture standpoint.
-
1. Can I create a rule for page titles to be "Product A - country - company name" or similar? Would that be enough to make the page titles unique? Is there any value doing so?
I think this depends on a few things.**First, what is the competition like in the SERPs? if you are in a super competitive space in any of those countries, this is probably not going to be enough. But it is possible it would be in some but not others. Competitive markets are game changers. **
**Second, how much do you care if the US content shows up in the UK? I worry about the similarities of the content in your examples. A title tag can get stupid "duplicate title" warnings to disappear, but I can't promise it'll make a difference in the SERPs. **
There is no harm in trying, however.
2. Can I "localize" duplicate MD by simply naming the country? I assume it is not enough in this case as all the rest would be copy/pasted.
**Duplicate MDs are less of a worry from my perspective. What I'd worry about more is the duplication of the actual pages. The content on the page is infinitely more important than what is in the MD. **
-
Thanks Tim.
I already have hreflang implemented and I wanted to dive more in the details of my international SEO so to speak.Alternate meta is definitely something I'm considering as per my question. And from my understanding of it, the variants I'm proposing are not enough to differentiate them. Correct?
But what about title tags? Neither you or Roman mention them. They don't matter much?
According to this article, it does. -
You would not worry about this at all?
I mean, say I do what you suggested above, then I should still review my titles and meta descriptions as per my initial question right? -
Have you taken a look here - it provides you with quite a few quality nuggets of information on international SEO.
I would certainly consider hreflang and alternate meta to help distinguish each location channel to help reduce duplicate content.
There are some other great resources on this too.
-
I would not worry about it, as long you made the right set it fo
- The canonical tags
- The language and region tags
- You submitted the sitemaps for every single region on Search Console
- Another good point to keep in mind is adding schemas to your pages
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
-
Wrong title tag
Hi, need help. I notice Google always , on all my pages (about 30), index wrong title tag. If I try to use "my-keywords-here | my_company_name" Google always index "my_company_name: my-keywords-here" and can't figure why is that :(
Technical SEO | | MirkoL
The problem is always only with "my-keywords-here | my_company_name".
If I use "my-keywords-here - my_company_name" or "my-keywords-here my_company_name" (without sign | ) everything is fine
Is anybody having any reasonable explanation?
Is anybody having Joomla page with "my-keywords-here | my_company_name" in the title and have indexed by Google like that? one example is www.ferometal-prerada.hr Thank you1 -
Can OG titles be used as a substitute for Meta titles
We use og (open graph) titles in lieu of meta titles. Is there any downside to using just one. Should we be using both og and meta titles on our page. Appreciate any insight. Himanshu
Technical SEO | | patilhimanshu0 -
Special Characters in Title Tags & Meta Descriptions
Do special characters, such as the "&" symbol or a "," in title tags and meta descriptions negatively affect your ranking in search engines? Any feedback is much appreciated. Thank you!
Technical SEO | | ZAG1 -
Duplicate Page Titles Warnings, htaccess Rewrite & Canonical Links.
Hey guys, Just signed up for a pro account and I am getting Duplicate Page Title warnings on links that are duplicate, rewritten for SEO, but have a canonical href tag. I have two sets of links in my store: SEO friendly: http://www.mysite.com/item/iphone-case Operational link: http://www.mysite.com/shop/product.php?pid=11 This operational link however has a href canonical tag pointing to the SEO friendly link as being the primary link. My question is; Do I need to worry about this Duplicate Page Title Warning if I am using a canonical tag on the Operational link pointing to the SEO friendly link? Thanks!
Technical SEO | | jason3600 -
Duplicate content problem?
Hello! I am not sure if this is a problem or if I am just making something too complicated. Here's the deal. I took on a client who has an existing site in something called homestead. Files cannot be downloaded, making it tricky to get out of homestead. The way it is set up is new sites are developed on subdomains of homestead.com, and then your chosen domain points to this subdomain. The designer who built it has kindly given me access to her account so that I can edit the site, but this is awkward. I want to move the site to its own account. However, to do so Homestead requires that I create a new subdomain and copy the files from one to the other. They don't have any way to redirect the prior subdomain to the new one. They recommend I do something in the html, since that is all I can access. Am I unnecessarily worried about the duplicate content consequences? My understanding is that now I will have two subdomains with the same exact content. True, over time I will be editing the new one. But you get what I'm sayin'. Thanks!
Technical SEO | | devbook90 -
Duplicate Content Issue with
Hello fellow Moz'rs! I'll get straight to the point here - The issue, which is shown in the attached image, is that for every URL ending in /blog/category/name, it has a duplicate page of /blog/category/name/?p=contactus. Also, its worth nothing that the ?p=contact us are not in the SERPs but were crawled by SEOMoz and they are live and duplicate. We are using Pinnacle cart. Is there a way to just stop the crawlers from ?p=contactus or? Thank you all and happy rankings, James
Technical SEO | | JamesPiper0 -
Duplicate Homepage In Google
Hi Just found through my SEO dashboard, Google has two versions of the same homepage, the root page, plus the index.html page, causing duplicate content from both the pages. what is the best option to ensure google only have 1 version of the homepage listed?
Technical SEO | | rfksolutionsltd0 -
How to resolve duplicate content and title errors?
Hello, I'm new to this resource and SEO. I have taken the time to read other posts but am not entirely sure about the best way to resolve the issues I am experiencing and so am hoping for a helpful hand. My site diagnostics advise me that most of my errors relate to duplicate content and duplicate page titles. Most of these errors seem to relate to our ecommerce product pages. A little about us first, we manufacture and retail over the internet our own line of unique products which can only be purchased through our website. So it’s not so important to make our product pages stand out from competitors. An example of one of our product pages can be found here: http://www.nabru.co.uk/product/Sui+2X2+Corner+Sofa In terms of SEO we are focusing on improving the rankings of our category pages which compete much more with our competitors, but would also like our product pages to be found via a google search for those potential customers that are at the late stage of a buying cycle. So my question: Whilst it would be good to add more content to the product pages, user reviews, individual product descriptions etc (and have good intentions to do this over time, which unfortunately is limited) is there an easy way to fix the duplicate content issues, ensure our products can be found and ensure that the main focus is on our category pages? Many thanks.
Technical SEO | | jannkuzel0