Title and Description Meta Tags

[BigChris]

Hi,

From a search engine optimization perspective, is it ok if the title and description meta tag for every page of my website is the same?

My title meta tag is 48 characters (including spaces), and it gives a concise "headline" of my site. My description meta tag is 149 characters (including spaces), and it gives a concise summary of the purpose of my site.

It would seem to me that keeping the title and description tags the same would allow a first time visitor to have a good idea of the purpose of my site, no matter which page the visitor goes to first, assuming the visitor sees the contents of these tags - changing the title and description tags to reflect the contents of each page would not allow for this.

My site is relatively small, there are only about 20 pages which are different in terms of substance and purpose (though the total number of pages will be in the hundreds).

Thank you for your time,

Chris

[Marcia]

From a search engine optimization perspective, is it ok if the title and description meta tag for every page of my website is the same?

Nope! Each page should have its own unique title and meta description (different from each other) that are descriptive of the individual pages.

[Chris Boggs]

What Marcia said is definitely the way to go. By the way the "Page Title" is not a "META" element, just for the record.

My site is relatively small, there are only about 20 pages which are different in terms of substance and purpose (though the total number of pages will be in the hundreds).

So what you are saying is you are going to have a bunch of useless pages that essentially repeat the same thing? That's what it sounds like from this description so perhaps you could be clearer? If you are essentially just building a bunch of the same content, search engines will identify this and may even penalize your site for spamming content. Now if each of the pages is for a unique product or service, then you have a good reason to place a unique title and description on each page?

You actually just came up with a good rule of thumb: is this page unique enough to warrant its own T/D? If the answer is no then you are probably decreasing the user experience. Think if the user first and the search engine will follow…

[BigChris]

Marcia and Chris Boggs, Many thanks for taking the time to reply.

Chris Boggs, below is a more detailed explanation of what was not clear in my question.

My site (an affiliate shopping website) will have 20 pages which are different in terms of substance and purpose (for example, the index page, the main page (describing how site works), the FAQ page, the about us page, the contact us page, etc.).

My site will initially have 250 other pages (though this should increase as the site expands). The FORM of these 250 pages will be the same, while the information presented in this form (list of online stores) will be unique to each page. When people go shopping via my affiliate website, they will first go to one of these 250 pages, depending on the store they wish to shop at.

My site will initially have 300 other pages (though this should increase as the site expands). The FORM of these 300 pages will be the same, while the information presented in this form (links to online stores) will be unique to each page. When people go shopping via my affiliate website, they will first select the store to shop at (by choosing one the above 250 pages) and then make another choice by going to one of these 300 pages, at which point they will be taken to the store they selected to shop.

Thus, even though there will initially be these 250 and 300 pages on my website, a given person using my website will only see two of them at a time.

What I was trying to get at was is it necessary come up with unique titles and description meta tags for all these 250 and 300 pages, as this would be quite time consuming.

I guess I should have asked if it is advisable (or necessary) to give each of these pages a title and meta description, given the time consuming nature of dong so?

Thank you for your time, Chris

[beu]

The TITLE element handles meta data but is considered less generic than META alone, since one and only one is required per document. The TITLE should reflect page content and the description should be a short summary of that content. If you decide to do one or the other, make TITLEs!

If you would like your pages to be relevant for their own unique content and therefore to rank top ten on search engines it is advisable to give each page it's own unique TITLE and description.

To see what it is currently like to search engines, just imagine how confusing it would be at home if all of your children shared the same name!

[stevewaganer]

You should have diffrent meta tsg for each of the page of the website ..... O/w you can have problem of supplemental results or similar pages... So the Meta tags should be diffrent if you have only 20 pages in your website.

[jimbeetle]

I guess I should have asked if it is advisable (or necessary) to give each of these pages a title and meta description, given the time consuming nature of dong so?

Quite basically, if you don't take the time to do it correctly you'll be wasting your time.

It doesn't matter that your site visitors will only see two or so pages at a time. Unique titles, meta descriptions and, if used, unique meta keywords, are necessary "from a search engine optimization perspective," as you framed your original question.

[beu]

All true, I like to think of each page as being it's own unique website.