Global meta descriptions.

[Robby]

When adding categories and products to ezimerchant I just use the global meta description in the SEO section.
However, when I look in Google Webmaster Tools they give an error that some of my pages(really all) have duplicate meta descriptions.
Is this a problem that I should address or does it not really effect anything?


Robyn
www.thehorsestall.com.au

[d.ferguson]

You will find a lot of conflicting advise on this topic.

Some will say that metakeywords and descriptions for each individual page really dont make any difference anymore - its the content of the visible webpage that counts.

And you will get others who swear by creating proper keywords and descriptions for each page.

The safe bet is to do the later.

[aschiller]

It is considered a good practice to avoid having meta keywords and descriptions which are not relevant to the page. Although the general consensus is that meta data is no longer as important as it used to be, anything you can do to improve your chances for ranking well, you should do.

The best thing to do would be to enter relevant descriptions and keywords against every category, product and additional page in ezimerchant. In the meantime, to avoid irrelevant keywords and descriptions against your pages, make your global keywords and descriptions as brief and generic as possible.

A very useful tool that you can use for SEO is IBP (http://www.axandra.com/go.to/ontech) from Axandra. We have used it very effectively for several of our own sites.