Meta Descriptions

[CarlWint]

Hi All,

Just a quick question regarding Meta Descriptions, I am currently looking at a site where an awful lot of the Meta descriptions are similar (not 100% duplicated). The reason being is that the site contains a lot of the same products, but different weights. For example a 500g, 1kg & 2kg version of the same product. Therefore the Metas are same, apart from the weight that's being discussed.

In my opinion the duplication is probably a little too close. Do you think in this circumstance its better to have no Meta descriptions defined at all?

Thanks!

[YNWA]

Here is a good article and read the comments. Interesting.

http://searchengineland.com/googles-matt-cutts-dont-duplicate-your-meta-descriptions-177706

[CarlWint]

Thanks for this.

I have had a look through this before and I suppose the reason I asked the original question was because I consider the Metas to be very similar and not quite duplicated. So its a big of a grey area.

As there is doubt, I think I will remove all Metas for now.

[YNWA]

I am in the same boat with an ecommerce store.

Same products but different colours.

I tend to write my own metas but mix it up a bit with colour, fit, size, material, where it is made, free delivery, official stockists etc...

[TomRayner]

Fully agree with YNWA and the above article.

When you consider that a meta description has a very small (if measurable at all) influence on your SEO performance nowadays, anything that could potentially be harmful or spammy should be removed.

Your MD is now a shop window - use it to include content that will attract people to your site, are you a local business, your phone number, free delivery, summer sale and so on.  If you have a page on your site that you're not actively trying to promote or use to bring people in, I see no problem at all at having a blank MD and letting Google generate one for you.

[David-Kley]

If it's possible, can you combine the products with variables into on page? Using the store's cart and checkout function, I would include a gallery of all the different colors/options, then have the selected options available through a dropdown menu. This way you have one page for a product, with selectable options rather than a large number of pages based around one thing. This may also help with on-page user time as well, since they will sort through the options to find what they are wanting.

[CarlWint]

Thanks guys, appreciated.

[YNWA]

That is a good option but the issue with it is that it makes your site look too thin.

If a user clicks on a brand, they will see 1 product rather than say 10. The 1 product may say 10 colours but I think people with tend to say "ah they dont have much on there".

Also for a small store (compared to the big boys), the ability to rank on colours is key.

My Red T-Shirt can rank and so can my Blue T-Shirt. Rather than my 1 product being T-Shirt - Various Colours or something like that.

I think its only the major players or well established stores who can get away with the 1 product with 10 colour options in.

[David-Kley]

I understand what you mean, but let me explain.

For small to medium size stores, this method makes more sense. Why?

1. Easier to add rich snippet markup on pages, due to lower product count
2. Can optimize pages around main keyword, rather than hyper-specific keyword. Example:
"custom t-shirt printing" would be more desirable and have more searches than "red t-shirt printing"
3. If the store has enough products or options, the store will not look thin, and also be vastly easier to navigate.
4. You will be able to spend more time optimizing around your higher level keywords. Example:
"men's collared shirts" rather than "mens black collared shirts". You can include both content and meta data for the individual details.

Sample meta: Yourshirtdomain.com is the number one supplier of men's collared shirts in the midwest region. 'different varaitions here'

For some very large sites, they set the sub-pages to no-index and allow the leading page to get them into the store. It's all a matter of how his site is set up, as to what will work best for him and his client.