Meta tags are an important component in creating site content. This component will not directly affect the position of your site in Google search results.
However, in the meta description, apart from the meta title and the title of your site is the first thing someone sees when reading search results.
Meta tags are important determinants that can make users decide whether to click on a link to your site or not. Unfortunately, because the meta tag is not visible on the web page, this component is often forgotten.
Another problem is writing a meta description that is too long so that it gets truncated in search results, or duplicate meta tags occur.
This article will go into detail about what the duplicate meta tag is, identify how it affects your site and how to fix the problem.
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Why is Duplicate Meta Description and Meta Title Not Good?
Meta description and meta title are very important to optimize your site's SEO. Duplicate meta descriptions and meta titles make all post pages on your site look the same to search engines, leaving users confused and more likely not to choose your page.
Improving the SEO meta tags will improve the user experience and performance of your site. Ultimately, this is what makes your site easily recommended by search engines and attractive to users.
Therefore, each page of your site must have a unique meta description and meta title.
If you can't write a unique and interesting Meta description, then it's better not to add it just yet. Sites without meta descriptions will actually be better than sites with duplicate meta descriptions and meta titles.
How to Find Duplicate Meta Titles and Meta Descriptions
Before starting to fix this problem, you should first find out which pages on your site have duplicate meta titles and descriptions. To do this, you have to open Google Search Console. Next, click the Dashboard menu, then click the Search Appearance menu, then select the HTML Improvements tab.
Under the HTML Improvements tab, you will see three options, namely Meta description HTML improvements, title tags, and non-indexable content. In the HTML improvements meta description menu, there will be three more pieces of information, namely Duplicate meta descriptions, long meta descriptions, and short meta descriptions.
If there are no problems in your meta description, then all three of these descriptions will show zero. On the other hand, if there is a problem, then the three statements will show the number of problems from each of these statements.
To find pages that have duplicate descriptions, all you have to do is click on the caption text. Once clicked, you'll see a duplicate of that description and the link or page with the problem.
How to Fix Duplicate Meta Tags in WordPress
There are several things you can do to fix duplicate meta descriptions in WordPress if you use the Yoast SEO plugin. Here are some methods
1. The perfect solution for static homepages and recent posts
In the Titles & Metas – Yoast SEO settings menu, you just need to enter fixed text in the Homepage Meta Description section by adding it %%page%%at the end of the text. This fixes the duplication issue for posts that have more than one page.
2. Not recommended in most cases
This method requires that you enable excerpt support on your WordPress site first. Next, use a meta description template and don't use fixed text. This method is suitable if your WordPress site uses a static page as the homepage.
For this condition, use the template %%excerpt%% %%sep%% %%page%% to place the meta description. Don't forget to set a static summary of the page you use as your homepage.
3. No index for posts with more than one page
In the Titles & Metas menu – Yoast SEO, there is a Sitewide meta settings menu under the other tap. There you will find buttons for subpages of archives. Select the noindex option to remove duplicate meta descriptions on posts with more than one page.
Conclusion
Meta tags are still an important component in the On-Page SEO of a site, although sometimes completing and managing this component is not easy. Any HTML improvements will make your site perform better in search engines.
Therefore, make sure you fix any problems with meta tags, be it duplicate meta descriptions or titles, meta descriptions, or titles that are too long or too short.
Fixing all these issues will provide a better experience for your site visitors and make your site perform better.