SEO takes a center stage when you are writing title tags and meta descriptions. These two elements directly affect user hits as search engines use them to find out the theme of the webpage and then rank it accordingly. Hence, you need to put in a lot of thought process to ensure you get the meta title and description right. Your efforts will be rewarded with high search engine ranking and attract users click on your link to browse through your site.
However, many times, while using SEO tools, like Google Webmaster Tools and DeepCrawl, to analyze your site, you may find that you have duplicate meta title and description. You may wonder how this affects your local search SEO.
The Problem with Duplicate Title Tags and Metas
When you have duplicate title tags, people looking through search results will end up thinking that the different web pages are actually one and the same. As a result, they may decide not to visit one or all the pages. Also, search engine spiders can get confused into thinking that two web pages are competing for the same keywords. This will, in turn, harm your search engine ranking. Hence, duplicate title tags can cause a major SEO headache for you. The same also holds true for duplicate meta tags.
Some SEO experts reckon that if you are unable to avoid duplicate metas, you will be better off not writing meta title and the associated description. It will help in local SEO more than using duplicate content.
The Logic
You may have a full-fledged SEO strategy, and title tags and meta description may play a small role in that strategy. However, if you disregard them, it will undermine user experience.
While meta title does not have any local SEO value, it will adversely affect traffic to your site through search engine results pages. On the other hand, if you have unique and well-written metas, it will attract visitors, and the click-through rate will increase. This is because your title tags and metas are what prospective website visitors see in search engine results pages.
Duplicate title tags and metas can make prospective website visitors believe that your web pages are duplicated even though each one may have unique and compelling content. Hence, they will avoid the so-called duplicate web pages, leading not only to the loss of website visitors but also return on investment. This can spell disaster for your entire local SEO strategy.
Since meta title is not really important in the big SEO strategy, you can do without them. Google will automatically create relevant metas for each web page if you leave them blank. This is a better option than resorting to duplicate content.
The Bottom Line
Whether it is duplicate title tag or meta title, it is bad for SEO and can limit the success of your website. The key is to figure out whether you have duplicate content using the right SEO optimization tools and then taking corrective measures to ensure there is no scope for duplicate tags or description.