Will changing the title tags cause me to lose rankings?
-
I have a site that gets pretty decent rankings. Based on Seomoz's assessment of my site I have ALOT of title tags that are too long.
If I make modifications to my title tags will that hurt my rankings?
I am also thinking of removing my company name from the title tag as that is taking up too much space.
-
HI Doug,
Thank you for your input a while back! Wanted to see if you could give me some insite on best practice for this........
On this site http://www.austintenantadvisors.com/ I have my main landing pages listed in the navigation under "Types". The reason why I did this is because I am not sure where to put those on the home page where it does not look spammy to Google and looks natural for users. Obviously they need to appear someone on the home page for Google to be able to crawl and index them.
Your thoughts?
-
I think this looks WAY better than your other one. I'll give you a thumbs up because you're learning.
-
Thanks guys for all your feedback and suggestions. I think I have decided on this one for the home page.
Austin TX Office Space & Commercial Real Estate. Find Rental Listings
Thoughts?
-
Thanks for that Francisco. Luckily my landing pages rank as well as my home page and each has good content.. Just been trying to figure out the best Title for the home page. I like what you suggested.
-
Completely agree with Francisco. The problem with home pages is that people try and make them mean something to everyone - and they end up not meaning very much at all.
Home pages are usually your brand landing page - it's the best place for people trying to find out about your company.
For someone searching for a keyword specific to one of your offers - a specific landing page is definitely the way to go. You can make the pages extremely relevant to the search term, the user intent and your specific offering. Think of the benefits to the user when they're landing on the very best page to answer their query.
-
You're over analyzing this. If your home page is the only page that ranks, you have problems. My website has 28% of incoming visits to the home page. 71% is to the landing pages.
BUILD highly relevant landing pages and write KICK ASS content for those landing pages.
This to me looks spammy: Austin Office Space For Lease | Austin Commercial Real Estate Properties | Retail Space For Rent | Austin Tenant Advisors
Obviously you are trying to keyword stuff.
I would write something clickable like this: Office Space for Rent in Austin for Commercial & Retail. Get Rates.
-
Thanks Doug. I totally agree with that however doing title tags for the home page is tough because that is the catch all right? From the home page I have links to more specific landing pages (e.g office space, retail space, etc...)
What is best practice for the home page title tags?
-
Are all these things equivalent? If someone was searching for office space, would they be interested in retail space?
Would there be any advantage using two separate pages targeting these two audiences each addressing the specific needs, and concerns specific to that type of customer?
Pages tend to be less engaging/appealing when there's a broad scope and generic content.
-
Then start building quality links with anchor text include "Lease, Properties, Rent, Retail" in them.
-
I really don't worry about it that much. I recommend to just do what is best for your customer and focus on conversions.
I literally copied and pasted from the SERP one of my pages. This is for the KW phrase "Ship car to Germany".
Shipping Car to Germany from USA - Save money shipping autos to ...
<cite>www.shipoverseas.com/us/ship-car/.../shipping-car-to-germany.html</cite>Shipping car to Germany from USA. Departure & Arrival Ports, Documents, Duty Tax. We ship cars for private individuals, active US military,and tourists.Notice that the keyword "Ship" is not in the title, but the related KW "Shipping" is. If I change the title tag to "Ship Car to Germany", then my rankings may be affected a little, but that's going to depend on where the competitors rank in Google's algorithm too. Now that I look at this, I have to change my title tag and description because I have better content on my page.
-
Thank you for the response. The challenge I have in adding my company name is that its 3 words and takes up space.......leaving less space for #1 and #2 keywords.
How do you suggest I handle that? I guess if Austin was the first keyword I could just have Tenant Advisors in the very end.
For example -
My current title tag: Austin Office Space For Lease | Austin Commercial Real Estate Properties | Retail Space For Rent | Austin Tenant Advisors
I could use this instead? Austin Office Space & Commercial Real Estate Tenant Advisors
If I do that then I'm leaving out Lease, Properties, Rent, Retail
-
Do you have your company name in the title also? Ive been reading it's important however in my industry people don't typically search by brand name......they search for exactly what they are looking for.
Did your rankings go down a little first? I have been told that I may experience decreased rankings for a few weeks.
-
That was a great post by Rand. Thanks for sharing.
Because my company name has 3 words it takes up a lot of characters. That is why I'm having a hard time squeezing it in and may just leave out. Besides when someone searches for my services they don't look up my company name they typically look up a keyword.
Also, what has been your experience about rankings and changing title tags? Should I expect them to go down for a few weeks?
-
Remember to consider that it's not just rankings, but also about getting click-through from the SERPS.
Searchers have got to feel that they are going to find what they're looking for when they look at your entry in the search results. I agree with Francisco that it's good to have a call to action in your title tag if you can (but it's not always applicable for every type of page), but also consider if you can get a benefit in there too - what's in it for me if I click on this entry...
In my experience long title tags tend to be less compelling than shorter ones, and can be compromised entirely if they're being cut-off.
Long title tags can also make it more complicated for people to share your content on social sites and even email. We've all experienced URLs that get broken when long lines get word-wrapped in email!
Your Brand or company name can be an important trust signal that may affect the attractiveness of your SERPS entry to searchers. You need to consider the search intent, and the standing of your company/brand in the market or niche your in.
You may find that it's not quite as black and white as {company name} {keyword} or visa-versa. You may want to have your company name in some titles and not others depending on the content and target audience (and their level of awareness of your products/services.
The only way to know for sure is to test. People are funny things and while you can try and make well informed decisions there can always be unforeseen consequences. Keep track of the changes you make, and measure the effect.
Good luck!
-
Make sure you watch the part where Rand talks about over optimizing your title tag. http://www.seomoz.org/blog/6-changes-every-seo-should-make-before-the-over-optimization-penalty-hits-whiteboard-friday
Here is my rule and I think EVERYONE should remember it. 1st word in the title is the most important. 2nd word is the 2nd most important. The last word in the title tag is the least important. Anything above 65 character is wasting time. Make your title tag enticing enough that people want to click it. Put your keyword and a call to action.
-
I had a bunch of title tags that were too long and I shortened all of them to be close to the max. My ranks all went up higher over a 2-4 week period. I just made sure all the important key words remained in the title.
-
if you focus on your main keywords, then it shouldn't be an issue, but keep in mind some listings will possibly change.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Page Title versus H1 title
What's the difference between the Page Title and the H1 title? It seems like both summarize the page. Is it a wasted opportunity to make them the same? Should they be similar but slightly different?
On-Page Optimization | | amybethmegjo1 -
Is this (title) keyword stuffing?
"Animated Explainer Videos by Wick Video" "Video" is used twice. Could this hurt us?
On-Page Optimization | | WickVideo0 -
Title Tag and Company Name
Hello everyone! The company I work for has an e-commerce site that needs to be optimized. I am starting from the title tags which are too long and need optimized for specific keywords. Thing is that each title tag contains the specific keywords for the page and the company name. My question is should I keep the company name within the title tags or should I just keep the keywords I target for those pages? How will it affect my rank? Cheers Oscar
On-Page Optimization | | PremioOscar0 -
If Google still shows my old title in the search results then there is no way my title change could have changed my ranking yet right?
If Google still shows my old title in the search results then there is no way my title change could have changed my ranking yet right? In other words if I changed from TItleA to TitleB but search results and cache still show TitleA then any SERP drops or increases would still be entirely based on titleA right? Thanks.
On-Page Optimization | | Rezo0 -
Wordpress Title Element tag too long?
So apparently when I add the name of the blog within Wordpress, the name of the blog shows up after the the main title of each blog post and page. So trying to keep the title element >70 characters, how does one name the Wordpress blog as mine is/was: Lake Tahoe wedding photographer / Heidi Huber Photography and keep that only on the intro page and leave each page of the blog and the titles of the blog posts to not have "Lake Tahoe wedding photographer added to the end of the Title Element? Anyone have any idea? I also had gone in at one point and updated every single Title on each page/post using Yoast's SEO and the SEOMOZ crawl is still coming up with over 216 caution errors for the title page. Thank you so much for any advice! Heidi
On-Page Optimization | | hmhuber0 -
Tags in wordpress -Important?
Hello, I use the Wordpress plataform in my blog. What I want to ask is, how important is the tag field in the posts area. Since I have the title tag and meta description how important is that field? Its really a question that was in my mind since I start doing SEO 😛 Tks in advance guys 🙂
On-Page Optimization | | PedroM0 -
Is is it true that Google will not penalize duplicated content found in UL and LI tags?
I've read in a few places now that if you absolutely have to use a key term several times in a piece of copy, then it is preferable to use li and ul tags, as google will not penalise excessive density of keywords found in these tags. Does anyone know if there is any truth in this?
On-Page Optimization | | jdjamie0 -
Title Tag length and UTF-8
Hello seomozers! Today I've come to one interesting question about Title Tag lenght in UTF-8 coded content. It's relevant to description tag lenght too. So, as we all know SEO best practices recommend that my Title tag should be under 70 (or 75) characters. Now, we have a website which is UTF-8 coded. That means that our special characters (some lithuanian letters) at the end gains +4 or +5 characters in length. So Google Webmaster Tools in our case report that some Title Tags are longer than they should be (exceeded by those +4 or +5), but in SERPs we see clear and not trunctated Title Tags (which means that our title tags are displayed correctly in UTF-8). The question is - should I believe in SERPs and don't take any action or maybe should I notice Google Webmaster Tools recommendations and shorten those tags ? Well, I do believe that at the end it's not so important, but I'd like to hear some more opinions on this simple situation.
On-Page Optimization | | jkundrotas0