If you’re already well-versed on meta info and duplicate content issues, you can skip to the next section to learn about how you can fix it with a WordPress SEO plugin.
If you’re still here, let’s talk about the duplicate content issue.
Meta tags are on the code side of a webpage. They cork bicycle zone are meta information (or meta data) about a page, including the title and description. Meta data is one of the first pieces of code that a search engine encounters when it crawls a page.
Meta tags in HTML of the BruceClay.com homepage.
Page source view on a BruceClay.com article
The meta tags tell the search engine what the page is about. That’s why it’s so important that the titles and meta descriptions be accurate and unique within your website.
As smart as Google’s ranking algorithm is at figuring out the topic of a webpage, it still needs help with context. Because it can’t read like you or I can.
So the meta information, especially the meta title, is critical for communicating the topic of the page. This, in turn, helps Google understand that the webpage is a good match for a search query.
It’s a common SEO issue: meta tags on a site having duplicate or similar text. This can be especially true on large websites with hundreds or thousands of webpages.
And it can happen for a variety of reasons. Meta tags may not be a priority, automation software may be used due to too many webpages, and so on.
Regardless of the reason, same or similar meta tags can cause duplicate content issues within a site. Again, this type of duplicate content is especially important to fix because meta tags are the first chance at communicating to the search engine what the page is about.
Will you suffer a Google penalty because of it? No. Google does not have a duplicate content penalty unless the duplicate content is deceptive.
From Google:
Duplicate content on a site is not grounds for action on that site unless it appears that the intent of the duplicate content is to be deceptive and manipulate search engine results.
This usually occurs when sites copy content from other sites and claim it as their own.
For duplicate content within a website, though, you can suffer some consequences. And that consequence is your webpages being filtered from the search results.
When faced with two pages whose contents appear too similar, Google picks the page that it believes to be the best for the query. And it leaves the other page out of the results.
But this may or may not be the page you want to show up in the search results &mdash so you want to avoid filtering.
How to Get Rid of Duplicate Meta Data with a WordPress Plugin
Until now, it has not been easy for WordPress users to identify duplicate content issues right in WordPress. But with our WordPress SEO plugin, it’s simple to get this data.
1. Install the Bruce Clay SEO WP Plugin
If you’re not already a user of our WordPress SEO plugin, here’s how you can get started:
Get a free trial here. We offer an affordable monthly plan at $24.95 thereafter with access to all WordPress SEO functionality plus our SEOToolSet® if you want more analytics and reports.
Installation is quick and easy, and you have two options. One way is to download the Bruce Clay SEO plugin from the WordPress repository here.
Another way is to install the plugin from within your WordPress site by going to WP admin > Plugins > Add New and searching for “Bruce Clay.”
2. Set Up and Sync the Plugin
This step will sync all published content on your website with the toolset. You’ll synchronize your content when you first set up the plugin, from the Settings tab.