Duplicate title tags and meta descriptions

[Harvey]

Hugo and Peter,

Webmaster tools indicates I have multiple title tags and meta descriptions that are duplicates.

Can you help me devise a solution to fix this?

[Harvey]

I'm wondering if the new change appearance feature is adding to my issues. Within that feature Classic topics are set to 20 per page, but due to other changes we've made only ten are showing. Maybe this is causing multiple posts to be treated as separate nodes. (?)

[Peter <Nabble>]

We will have to investigate it.

[Harvey]

I just figured out part of the issue

f2185909i16.html
f2185909.html

both of these pages have the same title tag and meta description.  The are page one and page two of my woodstove forum.  They need an added "Page 2" etc added.

[Peter <Nabble>]

Yes, it will be fixed.

[Harvey]

It looks like each subforum has the issue.

I'd like each title tag to read:

NY Ski Forum | The Woodstove - Page 2 | Harvey Road

in that basic format for each subforum and page number, with Page 1 left blank the way you have done before.  Thank you.

[Harvey]

Guys we can ultimately deal with duplicate title tags on multiple thread pages, by adding numbers to the pages.

But how can we deal with duplicate meta descriptions? Can meta description default values be pulled from the top of each page?

[Peter <Nabble>]

We could add the page number information to the description also.

[Harvey]

What do you think about pulling the description from the first post on the page?

[Peter <Nabble>]

I'm not sure how it could be done but even if we can, do you think it is appropriate? Sometimes discussions diverge from the original topic, sometimes a post meaning is too contextualized in a discussion... these things don't happen with the first post  of the topic because it defines the subject and determines the context itself.

[Harvey]

Very good point.

Hmmm. Anyone got any other ideas?

No way to just have google treat the whole thing as one page so it
doesn't need multiple titles and descriptions?

If not then I guess you do what you said:  Page 2: (repeat the
original description....?)

On Tue, Sep 6, 2011 at 9:10 PM, Peter <Nabble> [via Nabble Support]
<[e-mail]> wrote:
> I'm not sure how it could be done but even if we can, do you think it is
> appropriate? Sometimes discussions diverge from the original topic,
> sometimes a post meaning is too contextualized in a discussion... these
> things don't happen with the first post  of the topic because it defines the
> subject and determines the context itself.
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[Peter <Nabble>]

Consider that we could display it for Google as one whole page (I'm not sure if we can). Then when a query matches the third page of a topic, the visitor would be taken to the first page, where he might not even find the words he was looking for. I don't think that's appropriate.

For now I don't get any other suggestions but I'll surely let you know if I come up with something better.

[Harvey]

Been thinking this through.

Here is how I want to deal with title tags:

Forum Top Level title tag should read:

NY Ski Forums | Weather, Trip Reports, Ski Conditions, Gear | Harvey Road

and TOPICS VIEW would read

NY Ski Forums | Weather, Trip Reports, Ski Conditions, Gear | Page 1
NY Ski Forums | Weather, Trip Reports, Ski Conditions, Gear | Page 2


Sub Forum

(Forum Name) | NY Ski Forums
(Forum Name - Page 2 | NY Ski Forums

Post

(Post Title) | NY Ski Forums
(Post Title - Page 2) | NY Ski Forums

On the first page of the sub-forums I will edit the title tag to customize when you are done, but that should be no problem, right?

In addition as I mentioned elsewhere, I would like to eliminate the TOPICS VIEW from the bottom level forums. This would help eliminate duplicate title tags for TOPICS VIEW.

Still don't have a solution for meta descriptions but will think on that.

Let me know what you think.

[Peter <Nabble>]

It looks nice.

[Harvey]

OK let's do it.

Thank you.

[Harvey]

I have several instances where profile links show up as having duplicate title tags:

/template/NamlServlet.jtp?macro=user_nodes&user=a32974084~jj&filter=apps_only
/template/NamlServlet.jtp?macro=user_nodes&user=a32974084~jj

what is the "filter apps only" version?  Can it be nofollow?

[Peter <Nabble>]

I'll check it and get back to you.

[Harvey]

Harvey44 wrote

Been thinking this through.

Here is how I want to deal with title tags:

Forum Top Level title tag should read:

NY Ski Forums | Weather, Trip Reports, Ski Conditions, Gear | Harvey Road

and TOPICS VIEW would read

NY Ski Forums | Weather, Trip Reports, Ski Conditions, Gear | Page 1
NY Ski Forums | Weather, Trip Reports, Ski Conditions, Gear | Page 2


Sub Forum

(Forum Name) | NY Ski Forums
(Forum Name - Page 2 | NY Ski Forums

Post

(Post Title) | NY Ski Forums
(Post Title - Page 2) | NY Ski Forums

On the first page of the sub-forums I will edit the title tag to customize when you are done, but that should be no problem, right?

In addition as I mentioned elsewhere, I would like to eliminate the TOPICS VIEW from the bottom level forums. This would help eliminate duplicate title tags for TOPICS VIEW.

Still don't have a solution for meta descriptions but will think on that.

Let me know what you think.

Title tags are different but not exactly what I imagined.

The main forum page doesn't need page numbers as it is only one page.  Also no need to put "Standard" on anything.

Number of duplicates seems to be growing exponentially every day. Can we try to implement the above, and then see where we are? I know it's not perfect but I'm having a tough time imagining a system with out errors.

When i click on one link I get a blank page:

[Peter <Nabble>]

OK, we will implement those suggestions then.

You say the number of errors are increasing. Are they increasing because the number of pages is increasing or are we having different issues now, issues that we didn't have before?

[Harvey]

Peter <Nabble> wrote

OK, we will implement those suggestions then.

You say the number of errors are increasing. Are they increasing because the number of pages is increasing or are we having different issues now, issues that we didn't have before?

I'm not sure If I've caused these errors with the changes I've asked for or not.  I was trying to figure out if forums without modified title tags have these issues, and trying to understand the standard method of assigning tags. I was looking at my unmodified test forum. One thing I notice is that the default title tags for a subforum make no mention of the parent forum. Maybe I should work within this structure.  My titles are too complex now because I am trying to do two things - eliminate "duplication" errors AND optimize my site with keywords.

I could probably learn something if have you set titles back to the default setting to try to understand them better.

Question - do other forums display these kinds of errors in webmaster tools?

Also - when template is fully functional could I look into NAML and understand the way title tags are set up easily enough to make changes to the way they are structured without changing the actual NAML code too much?  Like can I see how the page numbers are created and then restructure the way they are setup?

And - at one point you removed the "Threaded" and "List" Views from title tags, and they are no longer indexed separately (I think).  Could this be done with TOPICS view too?

Sorry to be so persistent about this. I really want to get the title tags and SEO correct.

There has to be a simpler way to do it.