The dangers of missing title tags?

[lionstail]

On a recent check of google webmaster tools, our website had a problem with duplicate title and meta tags on our website on parameter pages (the pages with products 20-40 or 40-60 in a single section), so we removed all the tags from the pages. Now google webmaster tools is 'complaining' that we are 'missing' the title and meta tags for these pages (which, of course, we are). Is this bad for our search engine results? Is there another way to avoid both duplicate tags issues and missing tags issues, that perhaps we're not aware of?

All help is appreciated.

[Quadrille]

Yup, individualize them for your pages :)

It really is that simple.

Not only will your pages *do* better in the serps - they'll *look* better in the serps.

No point in appearing on page one as a mishmash of html; you'll miss out on many searchers.

[lionstail]

right, but i'm not really looking to get traffic to the 17th product page. getting traffic to the first product page is enough for me, for now. it's hard enough to write good text for the first product page- writing similar text for the 17 other pages with the same type of product would be nearly impossible- is that REALLY necessary?

[tedster]

getting traffic to the first product page is enough for me

Then how about a "noindex,nofollow" meta tag for the deeper pages? You could even use rel="nofollow" on the links that point to them. Just take those urls out of play altogether, if individualizing title tags is not in the cards.

[Quadrille]

I think it would be exaggerating to say that a site is as good as its weakest pages - but I do think it's possible that these 'incomplete' pages could do your ranking some harm.

Fairly likely, however, that the harm, if any, will be small.

Failing attacking the entire problem, I'd go for duplicate TITLE and meta descr., rather than none.

May be worth considering discrete pages - ie individual categories of no more than 20 products, rather than 2-3 pages + per category - if not for all, certainly for key products.

I always look at Google as an opportunity; a free ad. Even if you are not harming your prospects, you are definitely not taking advantage of them all.

[tedster]

Strongly related thread here: Pagination - KW cannibalisation and duplication [webmasterworld.com] - it might offer some additional insight.

[lionstail]

hi tedster,

the reason that we don't do a nofollow on the pages is so that the spiders can still hit the individual product pages (and a lot of our individual product pages actually rank well, though i don't know offhand if they are off the secondary landing pages).

any way to reconcile this clash of interests?

thanks as always!

[tedster]

Well, the best fix wuld be more PR throughout the site - that's the salve that soothes many wounds. So don't neglect good outreach and publicity that can help you get those authoritative backlinks.

So let's return to the main question - generating unique titles for these paginated results. Can you dynamically grab a short product name from the first and last items on the page and craft a unique title element that way -- "Product Q through Product M" or something like that?