Matt Cutts, Google’s head of search spam, answers a question about meta descriptions in his latest video where a user writes in to ask:
Is it necessary for each single page within my website to have a unique metatag description?
When it comes to metatag descriptions, Matt says there are really only two viable options. You can either have unique metatag descriptions, or you can choose not to put any metatag description at all. Definitely don’t have duplicate metatag descriptions.
A very easy way to avoid having duplicate metatag descriptions is by registering and verifying your website with the free Google Webmaster Tools console. Google will crawl your website and tell you if they find duplicate metatag descriptions.
Generally speaking, Matt says it’s probably not worth your time to write a unique metatag description for every single page on your website. Matt doesn’t even bother to do that on his own blog.
Matt recommends doing this only on pages that really matter. Such as your home page or pages that have high ROI. If you notice that some of your pages have really bad auto-generated snippets, you should consider writing a unique metatag description for those as well.
To sum everything up, you should avoid having duplicate metatag descriptions on all pages. Instead, write unique descriptions for some pages and just let Google auto-generate the rest.
What do you think about Matt Cutts’ latest video? Do you write unique metatag descriptions for all pages? Let me know in the comments section!
You can see the full video below:
