The title tag is one of the most important tags on a website. It is displayed in search results just below/above the page URL. Google Webmaster Tools, the predecessor of Google Search Console, displayed duplicate meta description, title tags warning in its HTML improvements reports section. This report is now deprecated. How to find duplicate markup on a WordPress site? To check whether your site has them or not, you can either use an SEO app such as website crawler or use the browser’s view source and find utilities. What are duplicate title tags? Duplicate markups are nothing but the presence of two or more HTML code of the same type on a page of a website.
This error may confuse search engines, and they may display either of the two titles in search results. Imagine that the site has two title markups and one tag is empty and another one has a user set valid title. The page that carries the tag has good content. If a search engine decides to show the empty markup of this page in the search results, this page may never rank in search engines.
Things that may cause the duplicate title tags error on WordPress sites:
Multiple SEO plugins: When you use two SEO plugins, the plugins will generate and add meta description, title, and robots meta tags to the page. A good SEO plugin will show a warning when you install another SEO plugin. For the good of your own website, you must disable one of the two plugins.
Theme’s built-in function: Some themes (for example Genesis Framework) come with their own SEO settings. If an SEO plugin or the theme itself doesn’t disable the theme’s SEO function when you install an SEO plugin, the page may have duplicate title and meta description tags.
To fix the issue, you should find the root cause of the problem. First, find out whether your theme has built-in SEO settings or not. To do so, go through the documentation. Once you find that the template has SEO options, disable the options completely. Another possible reason for duplicate HTML markup on pages is the simultaneous use of the two search engine optimization plugins. You should disable one of these two plugins and import the custom title/description that you set with the plugin that you have disabled.
Closing words: As a title tag is important, any issue related to it must be addressed quickly. If the issue is not fixed, the presence of a duplicate or invalid title tag might lead to the downfall of a well-ranking page.
