Meta title gives users a short idea of what they can learn after clicking. It is also a small ad that can both help and hurt your site. The description gives a more detailed understanding of the content. In addition to using keywords, you need to understand the difference between the two. They have different lengths:
- 50–60 characters for one meta title. And you can expect about 90% of your titles to display properly in the SERPs. If your title doesn’t match the content of the page, then Google can redo it
- 50-160 characters for one meta description. If this block is larger, then it is not fully displayed in the search results
What do “Meta titles and descriptions are the same” mean?
This means that your site page has the same text for the meta title tag and the meta description tag.
You can read more about these two important elements separately here & here.
What triggers this issue?
Information in the title and description can duplicate due to misconfigured plugin or script. In addition, there can be two repetition options. The text for the meta title was pulled up from meta descriptions or vice versa. Duplication in these blocks hurts your site’s SEO and CTR.
How to check the issue?
If you suspect that you have this problem, then you can check your site manually. This approach can be effective if you have a small site with multiple pages, and you can browse all your pages easily and quickly.
Or you can use the site audit tool if your site has a lot of pages. And you want to save time, resources and find possible duplicate information places.
Checking Title and meta description being the same is important but not enough to rank good enough!
Check not only the issue but make a full audit to find out and fix your technical SEO.
Why is this important?
Meta titles and descriptions are essential elements of your website. These blocks help users and search engines quickly understand what information they can find on a page. Hence, if you write good meta titles and descriptions that do not duplicate each other, your site has a higher CTR.
Moreover, meta descriptions are highlighted in bold if they match user search queries.
How to fix the issue?
After careful checking, you have found duplicate meta titles and descriptions. What’s next? You rewrite these blocks so that they add value to your site.
Be sure to include the following in updated meta titles and descriptions:
- Using keywords
- Correct number of characters
- Matching blocks with page content
And then make sure that you and your colleagues write these blocks correctly for new pages.
