Description duplicates issue means that there are two or more pages on the website that have the same meta description tag.
Why it is important
Ensuring that the website has properly written meta descriptions is a central SEO requirement. A meta-description is used to generate the SERP snippet that would describe the content of the web page to the user. If it is inadequate, users will be reluctant to click on the snippet and regardless of the page rank and how much effort went into website optimization, the traffic would suffer inevitably.
Meta descriptions are like short advertisements used to convince the user that the website contains the information sought. In case this description has words that match the user query, they will appear in bold, signaling high relevance to the user. Thus, a central focus when writing meta descriptions is choosing the keywords wisely.
Duplicated meta descriptions typically fail to accurately describe the content of each individual page. They are usually either too broad or simply do not match the information on the corresponding pages.
Google’s advice
<…>Identical or similar descriptions on every page of a site aren’t helpful when individual pages appear in the web results. In these cases we’re less likely to display the boilerplate text. Wherever possible, create descriptions that accurately describe the specific page. Use site-level descriptions on the main home page or other aggregation pages, and use page-level descriptions everywhere else. If you don’t have time to create a description for every single page, try to prioritize your content: At the very least, create a description for the critical URLs like your home page and popular pages.<…>
How to fix the issue
The solution is creating unique meta descriptions for each page. These should convey the content of the corresponding pages efficiently and with high fidelity.
Some key guidelines for producing good meta descriptions are listed below:
- Write appealing meta descriptions that would efficiently advertise web pages and would determine users to choose your site as opposed to others.
- Use complete sentences and make them highly readable and natural-sounding.
- The text of the meta description should focus on the particular page rather than on the entire site.
- Anticipate user expectations in terms of content and try to meet these expectations by making appropriate references to this content in the meta description.
- Use carefully selected keywords in your meta description – in case these match the user query, they will be displayed in bold within the SERP snippet.
- Avoid stuffing too many keywords in the meta description.
- Ensure each meta description is unique.
- Don’t exceed the length limit of 160 characters, otherwise, your text might get truncated.
- Truncation can also be triggered by the use of non-alphanumeric characters, such as double quotes – avoid these, since search engines might delete any text following them.
Detect pages with duplicate page descriptions
Crawl the website to collect all pages that have the same description meta tag
