Dec
14
Google duplicate content penalty for identical page titles and meta descriptions?
Filed Under Google | Comments Off
There’s been a lot of concern over this for quite a while, with the recommendation being that each page on a site should have a unique page title and meta description that relevant to that particular page. However, with what happens when they’re identical, I don’t think I’d call it a penalty, but a filter in operation.
Other than one (sometimes two slip through), when doing a site: search they’ll get filtered with what I call the “similarity filter” so you’ll see one (occasionally two) but have to click on that link they provide to see additional pages that have been excluded because they’ve been omitted for being very similar to the one shown.
I tested this on a site this summer, with pretty fast results. The web designer had run identical page titles and meta tags throughout the site, and put in a drop-down navigation list at the page top that was parsed as plain text, plus a “byline slogan” also across the entire site on the top of pages.
One page by one page, I removed the drop-down list, replaced the “motto” text with a graphic, and gave each page a unique page title and meta description.
One by one, as this was done to pages, they popped out from behind that “similar pages” link and showed up with a site: search.
It was a short term gig to fix a serious indexing issue that needed a difficult mod_rewrite solution, that was fixed, and just a few site pages were worked on by me, so there are still plenty of pages on that site that still have that similarity problem and did not, do not, and will not rank for the search terms relevant to the still_unfixed pages.
That’s all you can do is tell people what they need to do, but it’s up to them to actually do it. Way too cliche, but you can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make him drink.
I’ve got a page up with a list of links to white papers and patents on duplicate content. One of these days I’ll go through them and condense down and write up what seem to be the more important parts.
Dec
10
PHP Title and Meta Tag Generator
Filed Under Technical | Comments Off
Many thanks go to Hawkee.com for putting up the code for a php meta tag and title generator per request. I’ve been trying to figure out how to generate page titles and meta description tags without having to edit individual pages in an editor one at a time and then upload by FTP, and this will simplify the process (once I get it down how to use it).
Dec
9
Shopzilla Publisher Program
Filed Under Contextual Advertising | Comments Off
Thanks to Blog Oh Blog for publishing information about the new Shopzilla Publisher Program, which will include a variety of options, including contextual advertising.
Nov
24
Catching up after a blogging and writing hiatus
Filed Under Marcia Personal | Comments Off
It’s been the longest hiatus from blogging I’ve taken, but it’s time to jump back in and catch up. It’s been an interesting time, taking the real first vacation I’ve had in years and even staying off line for most of that time.
It hasn’t been idle time, just different. I’ve been going through to refresh and fix up the CSS on sites one by one, and started to dig into mod_rewrite and PHP, even ordering a print book on each from Amazon, which turned out to be written by a couple of the best authors of technical books I’ve ever read. I don’t have ambitions of becoming any kind of expert on either, but will definitely share little tips I learn and use with others on my Webmaster Woman site, which I’ve just started to remodel the CSS on and get ready to add more content.
Right in the middle of holiday shopping season doesn’t seem like the best time to take a break from “sales” sites, but when burn-out hits what choice is there but to shift gears for a while? Not doing anything web-related is unthinkable, so freshening up a site or two or three with some fresh content seem like a very palatable option when a change of pace is needed. For a while, anyway.
One of the things on the to-do list is a remake of this site, so the files have been backed up, themes are being looked at for a new look instead of this drab, plain vanilla (unless I get brave enough do one from scratch or dig into seriously modifying this one), it’ll be updated to the latest build, and have a major navigation change.