Title tags and Meta Description tags Duplicates?

Question

Hi,

I checked my website with Google Webmaster Tool and GG said I had 50 duplicate title tags and 37 meta description tags and they showed the No of pages that were duplicated.

What they mean by that? I checked the tags again, they were similar in description but for each description I put different keywords/ key phrases in.

For the tilte tags, I have changed one key phrase/keyword at the beginning of the title and keep the rest the same:

eg. Dress | Women Clothing | Long Gown to

Women Dress | Women Clothing | Long Gown

The MDTags were:

Beautiful women clothing at affordable prices

and in another MD tag :

Beautiful women dresses at affordable prices.

I have changed the description of every tags but still put the same keywords/key phrases (My website is on the first page of GG & Yahoo.com.au for those keywords, I'm afraid if I change the tags completely including the key words, my web ranking will drop)

Have I changed them correctly? Thanks

Answer 1

Using Google Webmaster tools is a great way to start.

Meta Tags are meant to give information to assist the Search Spider (not a human) decipher what your website is about and how to organize that information.

A Meta Title tag is what would generally show up as the title of your web page in a search result.

If you do a search on Google and look at the results.  The information at the top of each of the results that is underlined would be information that the Search Spider found in your Meta Title for that page.  Having the same title tag on more than one page, in your case the same fifty pages just confuses the Search Spider.  It is not a human that looks at each page and can see that each one has different content.  Instead it looks at the duplicate information and thinks you are trying to spam the Search Engine to get better rankings.

The same is true of the Meta description tags.  

In order to properly index your pages you need to have a different Meta Title for each separate page and a different Description in each Meta Description.  

I understand that in the broader sense each page may have womens clothing.  But you need to be a little more descriptive to show that each page has unique content.  If you don't distinguish that each page is different the Search Spider is going to boot your site to what is called the supplemental index, Also could be purgatory, Google h**l, Never Never Land.  Call it what you will, it all means that you will not rank well for any search results except if someone happens to type in your exact domain name.  (Tough way to run a business)

Take a little time and carefully go over each page. You as a person can see in an instant that each one is different.  Put that difference in the Meta tags until each page indicates that it is unique from the others.

Meta Keyword tags are something different.  Because in the early days Search Engine Optimizers abused this particular meta tag so badly to falsely manipulate the search engine results to their advantage, most of the major Search Engines have had to give these a lot less significance.  You can leave them off or on or the same, which ever you prefer but don't sweat over them.  

Just put something on each of your pages besides pictures of whatever you want to sell (again a detailed unique description) This time for humans and the text will also help the search spider understand the uniqueness and the need for each page to be stored for search results.

By the way, first page is great. Way to go.

Now make sure each title tag and description tag is different and unique before your ranking start to suffer.

Hope this helps.