Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
Should I change my product titles from singular to plural to satisfy optimisation?
-
At present most of our products are listed in the singular form.
http://www.towelsrus.co.uk/towels-bath-towels/aztex/turkish-cotton-bath-towel_ct473bd182pd2744.htm
However we are optimising for the plural form after carrying out keyword research
The question is should I update the product title to reflect this change? This would then change the URL of the page, H1 tag, H2 tag (both auto generated from the product title)
My concern here is that these pages will then become "new pages" and will need to index and rank, albeit they don't rank well as they have never been optimised until now. I could put 301 re-directs in place on the old URL's or i could just let the return a 404.
What do people think?
-
Hi Mat.
OK I had optimized this page for "Turkish cotton bath towels" and "Turkish bath Towels". That said, it still had 47 instances of the keyword in alt tags and a further 16 instances on the page. I can see why and where the extra instances are being generated unnecessarily which can be addressed when the product page is redesigned. As for the lat tags this is beyond me as to why its generating these so many times.
BTW, your helps really been useful. This is relatively new to me (2 months working on this site actively) and so much has come to light that you just wouldn't ever ask unless you get "hands on".
-
You didn't get an A grade when I checked it I am afraid. However results will depend on what keyword you enter. When I used the URL you gave above plus the keyword "towel" that gives you a B - mostly downgrading due to keyword stuffing.
The word towel is mentioned 105 times on that page.
This is clearly too much. Who ever put the CMS together probably read something about SEO written in 1998 and thinks that is the way to get results. Definitely get this addressed. Getting your CMS output correct on those template pages is vital.
Tabs can work well. However they do have to be thought about. At the moment it seems that the main purpose of the tabs is to hide keyword stuffed content - which doesn't help anyone. I actually quite like tabs for product pages, however I'd still have the most important information visible on the default page. However, that is personal opinion. A single page can work equally well and can actually be useful in terms of forcing you to edit and prioritise the information on that page.
-
Hi Mat
Thanks for the response. I have run all pages being optimsed through the on page checker and am getting A results for those pages optimised.
In regards to keyword stuffing, the issue I have is a lot of the keywords are dynamically generated by the system we use which is frustrating, I will be discussing this with them as I will regarding alt tags (40 instances of our keyword on 1 page in alt tags seems strange). We are about to have the product page redesigned to remove all tabs and have a 1 page affair so all the information is right in front of the customer without them having to click all over the place for more information.
Any further comments greatly appreciated.
-
You have both in the page title there anyway, so it must literally be the product name you are considering changing.
I really, REALLY wouldn't do that. You already have a product image showing multiple items. If your product name was also the plural I think you'd risk upsetting quite a few customers - you don't exactly make it clear looking at the page.
Customers first. Always. What's the point otherwise? Higher rankings, but less sales. In fact if I were optimising that page my first step would probably be to use that default overiew tab to ensure that everyone knew exactly what they were buying.
I think that your product pages are also a bit heavy on the keyword stuffing. I'm all for making things clear, but there are a lot of uses of the key terms going on. Maybe run some key pages through the onpage optimisation tool as well: http://pro.seomoz.org/tools/on-page-keyword-optimization/new
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
-
How many images should I use in structured data for a product?
We have a basic printing website that offers business cards. Each type of business card has a few product images. Should we use structured data for all the images, or just the main image? What is your opinion about this? Thanks in advance.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Choice0 -
URL structure change and xml sitemap
At the end of April we changed the url structure of most of our pages and 301 redirected the old pages to the new ones. The xml sitemaps were also updated at that point to reflect the new url structure. Since then Google has not indexed the new urls from our xml sitemaps and I am unsure of why. We are at 4 weeks since the change, so I would have thought they would have indexed the pages by now. Any ideas on what I should check to make sure pages are indexed?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ang0 -
Product or Shop in URL
What do you think is better for seo and for sale, I am using woo-ecommerce for health products website. websitename.com/product/keyword OR websitename.com/shop/keyword
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | MasonBaker0 -
Should you include domain / brand in Meta Title
Hello, I am trying to come up with a strategy for creating meta title information for my eCommerce store. I have read mixed reviews on the examples below. The first includes the company / brand in the meta title and thus is included in SE results. The second does not. Probably not a 'right' answer here so I look forward to answers with rationale... also open to a completely difference strategy all together! 1MR Vortex by BPI Sports - $Company_Name OR 1MR Vortex by BPI Sports - Pre Workout Supplement Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | 6thirty0 -
Exact match Title and H1 tags, and over optimization
Hi Mozzers - was just wondering whether matching H1 and Title tags are still OK, or whether there's an over optimization risk if they exact match?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | McTaggart0 -
Changing a parent category and 301 redirecting
I have a set of three pages that are subpages of a parent. The structure is as follows: mysite.com/directory/personal-widgets mysite.com/directory/commercial-widgets mysite.com/directory/widgets-services The partent page name "directory" really isn't working for where I want these pages to evolve. So I want to change it to "guides" In a world without worrying about google, I would simply change the parent page to guides, so they look like this, and be done with it: mysite.com/guides/personal-widgets But, the obvious problem is that I have external links to the page now. And the pages have a nice PR. And they also have Facebook page Likes and I don't know if I'll lose those. I know that if I should do this I should redirect the pages to the new pages of course. My question is: Will redirecting the old URL to the new URL with a 301 cause anything negative to happen that I might not be expecting? Does Google dislike Redirects for any reason, or understand they are sometimes necessary?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | bizzer0 -
Product URL structure for a marketplace model
Hello All. I run an online marketplace start-up that has around 10000 products listed from around 1000+ sellers. We are a similar model to etsy/ebay in the sense that we provide a platform but sellers to list products and sell them. I have a URL structure question. I have read http://www.seomoz.org/q/how-to-define-best-url-structure-for-product-pages which seems to show everyone suggests to use Products: products/category/product-name Categories: products/category as the structure for product pages. Because we are a marketplace (our category structure has multiple tiers sometimes up to 3) our sellers choose a category for products to go in. How we have handled this before is we have used: Products: products/last-tier-category-chosen/product-name (eg: /products/sweets-and-snacks/fluffy-marshmallows) Categories: products/category (eg: /products/sweets-and-snacks) However we have two issues with this: The categories can sometimes change, or users can change them which means the links completely change and undo any link building work built up. The urls can get a bit long and am worried that the most important data (the fluffy marshmallow that reflects in the page title and content) is left till too late in the URL. As a result we plan to change our URL structure (we are going through a rebuild anyhow so losing old links is not an issue here) so that the new structure was: Products: products/product-name(eg: /products/fluffy-marshmallows) Categories: products/category (eg: /products/sweets-and-snacks) My concern about doing this however, and question here, is whether this willnegatively impact the "structure" of pages when google crawls our marketplace.Because "fluffy marshmallows" will no longer technically fit into the url structure of "sweets and snacks". I dont know if this would have a negative impact or not. FYI etsy (one of the largest marketplace models in the world) us the latter approach and do not have categories in product urls, eg: listing/42003836/vintage-french-industrial-inspired-side Any ideas on this? Many thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | LiamPatterson0 -
Why should your title and H1 tag be different?
Is it dangerous to have your H1 tag and your title the exact same thing? My thought was that it's not be the best use of space, but that it couldn't cause harm. What do you think?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | MarieHaynes7