Same meta tags across a site.

[Bobc01]

Does it hurt having the same tags across a site, keywords/description etc?

Or does it's royal highness google think it's spamming and decides to spit it's dummy out.

Cheers,

Bob.

[Bill]

I would say the majority opinion these days is that google now notices that and includes it in it's spam filtering.

How much of an effect it has - that's hard to say.

But I wouldn't allow the same metas to be used on all the pages of a site, these days. Arguably it would be better not to use metas at all than to do that.

[Bobc01]

I guess i should of asked is there anything google doesn't consider spam.

Thanks Bill.

[Maj. Stress]

Originally Posted by Bobc01

Does it hurt having the same tags across a site, keywords/description etc?

Or does it's royal highness google think it's spamming and decides to spit it's dummy out.

Cheers,

Bob.

Something I learned a long time ago when I first started. Build the site then do the meta tags to fit the page.

[LowryBigwood]

I agree with Bill and Major. If you're going to use the meta description and keyword tags on your pages, I would take the time to make them all unique and relevant to the page.

[Bobc01]

ahh ok thanks

I think in my case i'm better off dumping the keywords on any but the index, links and tour pages and work on titles and descriptions.


Cheers,

Bob.

[Halfdeck]

Unique, relevant META descriptions improve SERP CTR.

One tactic is to use action words and include your keywords like people do when writing PPC ads. The key is to make people want to click through. Stuffing it with multiple keywords is unproductive.

For example, searching for "car insurance", you'll see geico's description:

GEICO auto insurance, online car insurance quote, motorcycle insurance quote, atv insurance, homeowner's, condo, and renter's insurance

Too spammy.

As a counter example, for "bank loan", AdWords ad promoting SuperPages says:

Need a Loan? Apply for Secured,
Unsecured & Bad credit Loans Today.

You got the keyword "loan" in there to make the listing look more relevant, the text isn't a spammy list of keywords, plus you got an action word "apply" to drive higher CTR.

BTW, similar/identical META description tripping a duplicate content flag hasn't been proved. Similar META description will not cause pages to get de-indexed or be chucked into the supplemental index. They may contribute to or subtract slightly from your overall site profile but I've seen too many large scale sites with identical meta descriptions to believe Google will act on that signal alone.

[Bobc01]

I see what you mean, good info thanks