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.
Is it possible to change a sitelink title by off page SEO?
-
Hi all,
I checked a website of my company: sitelinks in SERP are with the correct url, but one of the sitelinks’ title is completely irrelevant.
Is it possible that it was changed from "outside"? Or maybe it's a bug?
Thank you,
Imre
-
Hi Imre, by all means if you'd like to send me more detais via pm so I can see what you are talking about exactly, then feel free to do so.
Although I feel that my earlier advice will still be true. The anchor (sitelink title) is automatically generated by an algorithm and not manually edited (as yet). I have seen some pretty random sitelink titles for other sites. I have even seen sitelinks where the title has been taken from some random piece of code on the site. Unfortunately, without knowing the exact details of the algorithm, there is very little you can do to influence the anchors other than what Google outlines in their guidelines (which is very little).
Like I said previously, if the title is that problematic and you want it gone, then your only option is to demote the whole sitelink.
-
Hi stukerr,
No, it's not indexed in DMOZ. Maybe it could cause the issue, but not for now.
I have to tell you that using the keyword as the anchor of the sitelink can be useful for somebody else. That's why I think that somehow our sitelink was manipulated: not the url but the anchor itself.
-
Hey,
Just a quick thought, is the page in question indexed in DMOZ? I haven't seen it on any of my pages in a while but it could be that Google is using the title from there rather than your title - if so the noodp meta tag could get rid of it. Probably not the issue but you never know.
All the best,
Stuart
-
Hi Adam,
Thank you for your answer. My problem is that sitelink url is OK (that's why I do not want to demote it). But sitelink's anchor is a word that we do not want to use, because it is against our policy. I can send you exact details in a private message if you would like to know more.
As far as I know anchors and alt texts do not use this word.
It seems a very special issue.
Imre
-
Hi Imre,
Unfortunately there's not much you can do about the sitelink titles at the moment. They are fully automated by Google's algo and have no human input, that I'm aware of, as yet. All you can do is make sure your site architecture and linking structure is as good as possible. Google states that 'for your site's internal links, make sure you use anchor text and
alt
text that's informative, compact, and avoids repetition.'If of course you are completely unhappy with your sitelink then you can demote them.
Find out more about sitelinks here:
Hope this helps,
Adam.
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 to add titles to Pardot landing pages
I have 5 URLs that are "missing titles" however, all 5 are landing pages that were created in Pardot. how would I go about adding the missing title? Would I need to add it on our website platform or in Pardot?
Technical SEO | | cbriggs0 -
Create Page Titles from H1 using Yoast?
I'm working on a site that has 280 blog posts that have either been migrated from an old CMS site or created on the Dev version of the new WordPress site. We've written 280 unique meta descriptions so they don't truncate but it there a quick way I can export the current H1s and then import them into Yoast so they are set as the Page Titles? I've written unique Page Titles and meta descriptions for all the Service and Products page and just want a way to speed up the blog posts as their H1s are really good and what I would use as Page Titles anyway. Any help, greatly appreciated!
Technical SEO | | Marketing_Today0 -
Yoast SEO. After set up 404 error pages
Hello all, Something strange happened with my blog site. I recently signed to MOZ tools. Initially everything was fine, but during my last crawl I got loads of 404
Technical SEO | | A_Fotografy
pages. Few days ago I was tweaking some settings in SEO plugin according to this post https://moz.com/blog/setup-wordpress-for-seo-success What I noticed was that 404 pages were coming from my blog posts, but for
some reason category was missing in those posts. For example this link is 404
https://a-fotografy.co.uk/inchcolm-island-wedding-photography-bailie The one with category is https://a-fotografy.co.uk/wedding-pictures/inchcolm-island-wedding-photography-bailie/ So basically for some reason category was missing. Please let me know how can I fix this instead of doing hundreds of
redirects now. Thank you,
Regards,
Armands0 -
Can OG titles be used as a substitute for Meta titles
We use og (open graph) titles in lieu of meta titles. Is there any downside to using just one. Should we be using both og and meta titles on our page. Appreciate any insight. Himanshu
Technical SEO | | patilhimanshu0 -
Non-Existent Parent Pages SEO Impact
Hello, I'm working with a client that is creating a new site. They currently are using the following URL structure: http://clientname.com/products/furry-cat-muffins/ But the landing page for the directory /products/ does not actually have any content. They have a similar issue for the /about/ directory where the menu actually sends you to /about/our-story/ instead of /about/. Does it hurt SEO to have the URL structure set up in this way and also does it make sense to create 301 redirects from /about/ to /about/our-story/?
Technical SEO | | Alder0 -
Dynamically changing a title with javascript
Hi, I asked our IT team to be able to write custom page titles in our CMS and they came up with a solution that writes the title dynamically with javascript. When I look on the page, I see the title in the browser, but when I look in the source code, I see the original page title. I am thinking that Google won't see the new javascript title, so it will not be indexed and have no impact on SEO. Am I right ?
Technical SEO | | jfmonfette0 -
Can you 301 redirect a page to an already existing/old page ?
If you delete a page (say a sub department/category page on an ecommerce store) should you 301 redirect its url to the nearest equivalent page still on the site or just delete and forget about it ? Generally should you try and 301 redirect any old pages your deleting if you can find suitable page with similar content to redirect to. Wont G consider it weird if you say a page has moved permenantly to such and such an address if that page/address existed before ? I presume its fine since say in the scenario of consolidating departments on your store you want to redirect the department page your going to delete to the existing pages/department you are consolidating old departments products into ?
Technical SEO | | Dan-Lawrence0 -
What are the potential SEO downsides of using a service like unbounce for content pages?
I'm thinking of using unbounce.com to create some content driven pages. Unbounce is simple, easy-to-use, and very easy for non-devs at my company to create variations on pages. I know they allow adding meta descriptions, title tags, etc and allow it to be indexable by Google, but I was wondering if there were any potential downsides to using unbounce as opposed to hosting it myself. Any help would be appreciated!
Technical SEO | | Seiyav0