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
-
Which page will rank higher, my main article or the sub article linking from it?
Hi all, Can you help me figure this one out? I'm currently creating content for my website and I very badly want to know which page will rank higher in Google, my main article that has some keywords that are and links to my sub-article, or my sub-article which is optimized for those keywords? I will demonstrate with an example since I'm not sure my question is clear: If I have an article that talks about different kinds of candy and it links to a sub-article that will elaborate on specific candies like a mint candy ,which page will rank for mint candies. Until today I believed that if my sub-article which is linked from my main-article will rank for mint candies since it gets the support from my main article.Lately when experimenting this I found my thoughts to be wrong. Can anyone help me with this one?Any insights? Thanks, Leebi
On-Page Optimization | | Leebi0 -
Specific Ranking Mystery
Hello Mozzers I don't understand this specific ranking example, maybe somebody can help? For the serach term "elipslife" on Google Switzerland a client's page ranks around position 13. A competitor's page ranks at 9. And I don't get why: the competitor's page has no content and its DA is lower. Its PA is higher so I set a link in the client's homepage navigation a couple of weeks ago to lift the client's page PA above that of the competitor. This is not yet reflected in OSE currently however. Any ideas as to what may be the cause? Thx, Chris
On-Page Optimization | | ChrisCronimund0 -
Title Tags for a Joomla Website
Does anyone know what is the best way or plugin to use to easily get title tags inserted for a Joomla website? Thanks!
On-Page Optimization | | Gavo0 -
Colons in title tag?
Does Google view the colon as a keyword separator like it does with the pipe (|) character? Currently, our site automatically constructs the title tag based on the page name given by the user. Long ago, we started using the colon character to visually separate the brand & model of the product from the size, and as a result, all of our title tags have been constructed this way. This was done more to make it easier to read for humans than for search engines. My question is - should I consider getting rid of the colon from our title tags? To give more info, our website sells tires. So, for any given model of tire, there might be 25-100 different individual sizes. The tags are constructed as follows: (brand)(model) : (size). Here's an example from our site: GENERAL ALTIMAX ARCTIC : 225/45R17 91Q The brand is General Tire, the model is the Altimax Arctic and the size is 225/45R17 91Q Since this entire string really constitutes the full product name, should I remove the colon so that Google views it that way? Or, since I have used a colon instead of a pipe, will Google simply ignore it and treat the entire string as one keyword phrase?
On-Page Optimization | | kcourtem0 -
Choosing a title tag in seo (H1 or H2 or H3)
I look many times on google that what is the best tag to set in title for seo, H1 or H2 or H3 In many forums and sites they are asking that you need to put only H2 tag in title and someone ask to put H1 in title and i am confused, Some body tell me the correct tag for seo in google, or any other search engine.
On-Page Optimization | | seom20140 -
Changing url in connection with meta title inconsistency
We run a site, which is a directory type one, where visitors can look for local businesses per city as well (at some point similar to the 'Yelp concept'). Now, we use www.example.com as the homepage, and the www.example.com/city1, where city1 is the capital of our country, is 301 redirected to the homepage, so this is your default setting. When you choose e.g city2, your url changes to www.example.com/city2, and the city value is stored in a cookie. Then, when you leave the session, and return to the site later on, you will see the homepage url, but with your previous choice of city (in case you let cookies be stored). My concern is, that the meta title always contains the chosen city name, so when you return to the website, and you previously used city2, you will now see the homepage url (which normally belongs to city1), but with the meta title of city2 or with any other previously chosen city. Does this mean a problem, and should I always use the correct url, which would be www.example.com/cityX, or this could not cause a problem for me? If it does, would you mind sharing me the exact problems as well? Thanks,
On-Page Optimization | | Dilbak0 -
2 Titles
The analysis said that I have two titles on our main page. www.msperformanceonline.com the 1st is "Camaro Accessories, Camaro Parts, MS Performance" and the second is ( and""). I have looked and can't find out where it is!?! I been looking for hours through the code. Is there anything else I can use to find it? I Anyone's help will be appreciated.
On-Page Optimization | | msperformance0 -
Anchor_partial_atpiu??? in ranking factors
Could anybody explain what does it mean anchor_partial_atpiu in ranking factors http://www.seomoz.org/article/search-ranking-factors#metrics-1
On-Page Optimization | | PeterSEO0