Do you have meta description tags on your site? Are they optimized correctly? What is your meta description length? Do you have an original description for each page?
A meta description is not a ranking factor to search engines. Yet, it is important as an element that makes snippets in SERPs more visible and can influence users to click through to your page.
At Spotibo, you can get automatic results for these meta description issues:
- Meta description is empty or not set
- Duplicate meta description
- Meta description is too short
- Meta description is too long
- Pages with more than one meta description
Meta description is empty or not set
Why does the error occur?
Some of your meta description tags <meta name = “”> are not set or might be empty in a source code.
How does it impact SEO?
Low – mid importance: ★☆☆
The consequences for your site are not so bad; even if you haven’t set meta descriptions, search engines can generate them from the content of a page.
How to fix it
- At Dashboard, open issue Meta description is empty or not set.
- After clicking, you will land on Explorer sections, where you can filter and group the URLs as needed.
- Fixing this error is not necessary for SEO, but it’s always good if you create clickable descriptions of your page that can lure new visitors to click through.
[box type=”download”] An example for adding meta description:
After you create a meta description, just add the following to the section of the HTML code to the particular page:
<meta name=”description” content=”The best meta description ever.”>[/box]
Advanced tip:
Spotibo will find every URL that has an empty meta description. But that doesn’t mean you have to fix them all. On large sites, you can skip right through admin, user, search and many other pages that are not important landing pages and don’t bring any organic traffic.
You can exclude them easily by following these instructions:
- Add Filter.
- Exclude URL containing “admin.”
- Use as many filters as you need.
Note 1: Pages that don’t necessarily need to have meta description are news posts, blog posts or private pages. For these type of pages, Google usually generates different meta descriptions from the page content with the aim to answer in the most accurate way to the search query. On the other hand, pages that could benefit from having unique meta descriptions are homepages, main category pages or product pages.
Note 2: According to our research, the best way to create a meta description is to use the most searched targeted keywords, both in meta descriptions and in the titles.
On a WordPress website, the easiest way of optimizing metadata is by using the Yoast SEO plugin.
Duplicate meta description
Why does the error occur?
You have duplicate meta descriptions on your site, which means that there are at least two pages with the same meta description.
How does it impact SEO?
Low importance: ★☆☆
Having duplicate meta description can have a negative impact on CTR in SERPs, if you use the same ones on pages with different content.
How to fix it
- At Dashboard, open issue Duplicate meta description.
- After clicking, you will land on Explorer sections, where you can see affected URLs.
- Click on the + button to see URLs with the same meta description.
- Make each of your descriptions unique and descriptive for every important landing page bringing organic traffic. Don’t forget to use relevant keywords and make sure it is no longer than 920px.
Note: In some cases, it can be better to have no meta tags rather than duplicate meta tags that look off-topic, low quality or outright spammy. Google could ignore them and pick more relevant text for the snippet.
Meta description is too short
Why does the error occur?
Some of your meta descriptions on the website are too short.
At Spotibo, we evaluate meta descriptions as too short if they are less than 300px because shorter descriptions might look unattractive in snippets on SERPs.
How does it impact SEO?
Low importance: ★☆☆
If your meta descriptions are under the limit, the information they carry is not using the full potential and might not include relevant keywords. This might result in lower CTR.
How to fix it
- At Dashboard, open issue Meta description is too short.
- See the URLs with meta descriptions that are too short.
- Rewrite those meta descriptions so you use their full-length potential.
Note: The maximal meta description length is 920 pixels (approx. 158 characters) on desktops and 680 pixels (approx 120 characters) on mobiles. Try to put the most interesting and intriguing information in the first 680px so the information will be displayed in any search engine, mobile devices and social media. You can use our meta description checker to see immediately if the length is OK for mobile and desktop devices.
Meta description is too long
Why does the error occur?
Some of your meta descriptions on a website are too long. At Spotibo, we evaluate meta description as too long if they are more than 920 pixels.
How does it impact SEO?
Low importance: ★☆☆
If your meta descriptions are over the limit, the information they carry is usually shortened by search engines. That may look unattractive in SERPs, which might result in lower CTR and organic traffic.
How to fix it
- At Dashboard, open issue Meta description is too long.
- See the URLs with too long meta descriptions.
- If your organic traffic comes mostly from Google, rewrite your meta description and make it less than 920 pixels. Check out our infographics with meta description limits for 2018 and use a meta description checker to see immediately how it works for mobile and desktop devices.
Pages with more than one meta description
Why does the error occur?
In the <head> section of a page, there were more meta descriptions added in the source code.
How does it impact SEO?
Low importance: ★☆☆
Two or more meta tags can confuse search engines so they can either pick one of them or even ignore them all.
How to fix it
- At Dashboard, open issue Pages with more than one meta description in <head>.
- After clicking, you will land on Explorer sections, where you can see impacted URLs.
- Remove all excessive meta descriptions from your pages and make sure there is only one.
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