SEO - How to stop blog tagging creating duplicate meta descriptions

[mariannemca]

Hi Community

Looking for some SEO help! How can I stop tagging on blogs creating duplicate meta descriptions on my site? I use tags to assign blogs to specific categories and some fall into more than one category and it is being flagged as a duplicate meta description issue.  www.kula-giving.ch

[Javitoo]

I actually ran into this exact same issue recently with blog tags creating duplicate meta descriptions! I came up with a solution that worked really well for my case, and I'd be happy to share what I did.

The idea I implemented was to create metaobjects that contain:

• The tag name
• A custom SEO title
• A custom SEO description

Then I modified the theme to check these metaobjects against the current URL. When it finds a match, it uses the custom SEO information instead of the default one. This way, each tag combination gets its own unique meta description, and the duplicate content issue goes away while keeping your tag system working as normal.

Just to be upfront - this does need some custom development work since it involves:

• Setting up the metaobjects structure
• Making changes to your theme code
• Making sure everything works with your specific setup

Since this is a custom solution, it would require some development costs to implement. You can work with me or any other Shopify developer who's comfortable with metaobjects and theme customization. If you'd like to discuss this solution in more detail, feel free to send me a PM, and I can explain how we could adapt this for your store.

[Avitanshi_17]

Hi @mariannemca!

When you use tags to assign blogs to multiple categories, Shopify creates separate URLs for each tag (e.g., yourshop.com/blogs/news/tag1 and yourshop.com/blogs/news/tag2). This can lead to duplicate meta descriptions, which can confuse search engines and impact SEO.

How to Fix It?

1. Use Canonical Tags
Shopify automatically adds canonical tags to blog posts, but double-check that each blog post points to its main URL (without tags). This tells Google which version is the "original" and helps avoid duplicate content issues.

2. Manually Set Unique Meta Descriptions
If possible, customize meta descriptions for each version of the page using Shopify’s built-in SEO settings. If Shopify doesn't allow this at the tag level, focus on optimizing your main blog post descriptions.

3. Limit Indexed Tag Pages

• If your tag pages don’t add much value on their own, consider preventing them from being indexed by adding "noindex" to them via Shopify’s theme.liquid file.
• You can also block them using your robots.txt.liquid file (if your Shopify plan allows editing it).

4. Reduce Overuse of Tags
Instead of assigning multiple tags to every blog post, try keeping them minimal and relevant to prevent excessive duplicate URLs.

Final Tip

If duplicate descriptions are still a problem, consider checking your site with Google Search Console to see which pages are getting flagged. This will help you fine-tune your SEO strategy!

Hope this helps! Let us know how it goes. If you like the solution, please accept this answer. Thank you

[mariannemca]

thank you for the advice! will give this a go!

[Avitanshi_17]

Hello @mariannemca, I am glad that you are considering trying my suggestion. It would be better for me if you could accept my answer as a solution. You can do this by clicking on the three vertical dots given at the top-right corner of my answer. Thank you so much.