Duplicate Meta tags

Hi all

Is duplicate meta data a bad thing for an e-commerce site?
Reason being i've just looked through Google web master tools which mentions that my site has 412 duplicate meta descriptions, which are very similar word's just in different order.
Any help would be really appreciated.

 

WHich is the duplicate part you have? if it's duplicate titles, yes it can be a problem. However, duplicate keywords and descriptions are not a problem in general.

 

As you can see a message/warning in Google's WMT you will need to rectify the issue but you will not receive any penalty.
But just think as an user, how will you react when you find same content on many pages? Also Google in its search engine optimization guide suggests to use unique title and description tags across your site. So take time to diversify the meta data.

So you haven't completely read the post and went on your way to give reply?

Crap!

 

No... Most people when they say meta descriptions they also mean the meta tag set as a whole. that is why I had to ask again. I noticed the "meta description" in his post, and that is why I gave the answer for the description part as well.

I still stand by this. If you are into SEO, you will know that descriptions are not used for ranking. They just serve as a means for describing you page the way you want it. If you dont give descriptions, then Google will show a snippet of what it thinks should be relevant (finds the keyword part and shows it). In my opinion, this is the best way and my testings has also proved it positive

For your information, Meta tags cant be viewed by the user unless they go to the source of the page, which not many users will do (Why should they)

I suggest you think before flaming others

Thanks

 

To be honest on an eccommerce site it is usually unavoidable.

 

Why do you go for other explanations/definitions/meanings rather replying to what you see in the message. He clearly mentioned that he found from WMT that his meta description was duplicated. Duplicate description was not part of his issue it was the main thing to which you gave part explanation!

No probe! Its up to you. You can go as you wish. But please don't rant. Because meta algorithms are not designed by us. We follow what major search engine suggests. Take a look at Google's SEO guide which tells to keep unique meta tags on site.

You just observed the meaning to a single line missing the connection to my actual theme! Read the link again: "But just think as an user, how will you react when you find same content on many pages?" Means, just as how a user reacts with repeated content, bots also will also consider this as a duplicate. It doesn't mean meta data can be viewed directly. I feel sorry you cannot understand the objective behind!

I would be great full to you if you had taken the same time and interest to reply to the actual query which you didn't!

God Bless!

 

Simple everyone: Just make unique meta tags throughout your site and diversify the data based upon the content of your pages. I'd go through and change a ton of things and just optimize your stuff for SEO. I read the comments above and I definitely agree that duplicate meta tags are easy to come across with ecommerce site due to the automated actions of ecommerce sites

 

I think its unavoidable as well..., but you could possibly make every single meta tag for every single page different. Would take some time, but can be done.

Now, is it a problem? I think it is... Google already says they don't like duplicate content - so, I'm sure they won't like duplicate meta tags either.

 

It helps if you don't have duplicate. However, it is not the most important factor in SEO. I have a lot of duplicate meta tags on some of my pages yet they still rank well. The reason is I have a lot of dynamic pages and hard to give an unique meta tags for each page.

 

I tend to agree with what smallbusinessguy mentioned. He is right about decription and keywords tag. Description tag does not come into play for rankings nor do they affect your SEO efforts. Why Google recommends having different descriptions is because of that being uder friendly. Suppose you have a double listing on a page, peopel see different titles but the same decription. So they might get confused.

My recommendation, in addition to what smallbusinessguy told, will be to give description only if you want to convey something that you feel should decribe the page or dont bother at all.