Keyword Placement in Page Title - will changing it make a big difference?
-
Hiya guys
I've noticed since changing my Title of my forum from:
Talk Nightlife | Nightlife and Clubbing forum for the UK
to
Talk Nightlife | Nightlife Forum and Clubbing Guide for the UK (current)
... That its jumped from 22nd to 10th in google for term "nightlife forum"
Am wondering, because of the on site optimisation tool telling me I should put the keyword to the front to something like eg:
Nightlife Forum | Talk Nightlife Clubbing Guide for the UK
Will changing the Keyword and putting it to front of the Title make a big difference?
Your thoughts please guys
Cheers Luke
-
Yep, I like this one too Dana.
I'm sure "UK Clubbing Guide" would have more searches than "Clubbing Guide for the UK" anyway.
-
I'm not a fan of stop words in titles. How about
Nightlife Forum | UK Clubbing Guide | Talk Nightlife
What do you think? I basically just got rid of the "and, for, the" - But it remains very readable.
-
Thanks for your responses guys, very much appreciated. The next step would be to change it, but advise to changing it to what? in your opinion the best.
Talknightlife is a nightlife forum for the Uk (hope you guessed that)
... so it's currently Talk Nightlife | Nightlife Forum and Clubbing Guide for the UK
what you you reckon? changing it to
A: Nightlife Forum and Clubbing Guide for the UK | Talk Nightlife
B: Nightlife Forum | Talk Nightlife a Clubbing Guide for the UK
Nightlife Forum | Talk Nightlife | Clubbing Guide for the UK
I'm ranking 1st for "Uk nightlife forum" / "Nightlife Forum UK" so I don't really need UK at the front.
Thanks for your help so far guys, let me know more your thoughts
Regards Luke
-
Hi Luke!
It is my experience that title tag is still a weight element and the last one. What that means is that first word has more effect then second that has more then third etc. We are not talking about any dramatic but a little little more.
The reason for this and the strongest reason why you should "weight" your most relevant (important) keyword to the front is how the user interact with your search result in the SERP.
Users do a vertical reading which means that our eyes will catch the first 2-3 words while browsing downwards in the SERP, so if dont have your relevant keywords within that "area" you will get less clicks.
That is also why, we in most case (not always) want the brand keyword last, so we can keep as relevant keywords in the beginning of the title as possible.
Also if you auto generate a lot of your titles, it's smarter that if you title is longer than the ~63 characters the brand tag falls out than the relevant keyword for that page.Also a note, if Talk Nightlife Clubbing Guide for the UK is your "brand tag" I would recommend to rework it to something shorter, to leave more room to page specific information to the left.
-
Actually blogs are talking too much about link building that it seems like on-page optimization is less important or some even come to me for link building on their website with any on-page optimization was not proper.
I think On-page optimization is really important and out of all the on-page factors title tag is one of the most important one. I think if title tag can be handled correctly you can actually beat your very powerful competitors for some of the highly competitive key phrases.
-
Hi Luke,
Most of the initial jump was probably due to the fact that "nightlife forum" wasn't actually in your original page title. You had the 2 individual words in your title but they weren't placed next to each other, thus Google reads them as "nightlife" and "forum".
By putting them together it signals to Google that you're trying to rank for that phrase.
As for the placement of keywords at the beginning of your page title, sure it helps a little. I usually recommend having the brand/web site name at the end. I'd go for something like:
Nightlife Forum and UK Clubbing Guide | Talk Nightlife
Your site will rank for "Talk Nightlife' anyway, it doesn't need to be at the beginning of the title.
Hope this helps!
-
In short yes it makes a difference. However Primary Keywords vs Branded Keywords can influence your CTR.
If you have a high affinity Brand I certainly would consider putting those at the front of the page otherwise I have always follow the specific to general format.
-
I too have seen this kind of change make a big difference, but sometimes it;s short term and the page sinks back down to where it was before. I think a new page title makes Google bot temporarily "curious" and it thinks "Oh I've found a new page!" Remember, bots aren't as smart as humans, so it takes them a while to catch on.
It's great that your page moved up. Watch it for a month and see what happens. If it retains its position, then maybe it's a good tactic to try on other pages
It could be that the change you made was a better "title" for the actual page. Finding better, more accurate, concise and descriptive titles that really hone in on what your page is about is always a good thing.
Hope that helps!
-
Yes! It's really make big different, my experience, i'm working on many of keywrods very compete last month, keyword in begin of title help me ranking better (from 14 > 4 within 4 day, 8 > 5 within 7 day... ).
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
-
Hey guys so i changed my title on the website
The old one was very keyword stuffed and repeated words. see its now gone from search for those main keywords do you think its just playing now and it will be back ?
On-Page Optimization | | johan81 -
Duplicate Page Title issues
Hello, I have a duplicate page title problem: Crawl Diagnostics Reported that my website got **sample URLs with this Duplicate Page Title **between:
On-Page Optimization | | JohnHuynh
http://www.vietnamvisacorp.com/faqs.html and these URLs below:http://www.vietnamvisacorp.com/faqs/page-2
http://www.vietnamvisacorp.com/faqs/page-3
http://www.vietnamvisacorp.com/faqs/page-4
http://www.vietnamvisacorp.com/faqs/page-5 I don't know why, because I have already implemented rel=”next” and rel=”prev” to canonical pages. Please give me an advice!0 -
On page "F" and I changed my tags long ago to match everything and still F?
My on-page analysis shows that my title tags are not supporting my keyword..........but they are! My title tag has my EXACT keyword phrase. What gives? Keyword is "San Diego Party Bus" Title is "San Diego Party Bus | xoxoxox | xoxoxoxo" F grade! ????????
On-Page Optimization | | DrewSpinoso0 -
Re-targeting keywords from homepage to category page
My website home page ranks well for a keyword lets call it 'Keyword1'. I'd like to create a new category specific to 'Keyword1' and name it 'Keyword1' so the relevant content and products can sit in there. How can I ensure that my rankings of my current home page are passed on to this new category page? Many thanks,
On-Page Optimization | | alexhowe0 -
Page Title - What is better?
Hi SEO Heads, I have another question if someone would be so kind in answering What page title of the 2 below is better for SEO (i) Chocolate Cake|Chocolate Cake Recipe|Xmas Cake or (ii) Chocolate Cake | Chocolate Cake Recipe | Xmas Cake As you can see (ii) Page Title has a space before and after the | (vertical bar) I know the second page title looks better to human eyes but on some pages I had to forego the space so i could fit my keywords in the page title. is this a good idea? Can anyone help me? Cheers Aidan
On-Page Optimization | | aidanlawlor0 -
Changing Link Title Tags & Backlinks
On 4/19/12 I began changing the link title tags in an effort to further optimize my website. I thought they were excessively long and it would be beneficial to make them more concise. On 4/26/12 my website traffic began to fall drastically and I'm not sure if it is from google's penguin update or from changing the link title tags. I started looking into the sudden drop of traffic and realized that when I run the site explorer tool on all of the pages I changed, the URL is redirecting. It appears that the backlinks are not passing through to the new URL. Before I Changed the Link Title Tag: http://www.opensiteexplorer.org/links?site=www.beautystoponline.com%2FAndis-Professional-Hair-Clippers-s%2F102150.htm **After I Changed the Link Title Tag: ** http://www.opensiteexplorer.org/links?site=www.beautystoponline.com%2FAndis-Clippers-s%2F102150.htm So my questions are: The above example shows that the old title tag (www.beautystoponline.com/Andis-Professional-Hair-Clippers-s/102150.htm) has 43 backlinks and the new one (www.beautystoponline.com/Andis-Professiona-Hair-Clippers-s/102150.htm) has 0. Will the links eventually be attributed to the new URL. I understand that the user will still be directed to my website they click the any of the backlinks, but will the link juice pointing the old URL pass through the new one? Would it be better, in the long run, to continue optimizing the link title tags.
On-Page Optimization | | BeautyStop0 -
Page title in SERP question
Has anyone typed in a phrase in Google and seen their listing on the SERP, but the page title on the Google SERP is not what the CMS is set to ? Ie the page title in the SERP is not what is expected? Something related to the company, but not what is set on the CMS… Very odd – has anyone seen something like this before? What could be causing it? Is there a way to change it?
On-Page Optimization | | inhouseninja0 -
Ranking on page 5 for a 1% difficulty keyword
Hello mozers, I am going crazy over this. I have designed a new site www.smh.cz. The company name / kw is unique (Smolikova Mikulas Hendrich), but it appears on page 5 on Google.
On-Page Optimization | | ilincev
Yahoo and Bing is fine (in top 3 positions). All the on-page factors are ok too.
All the smh.cz pages are indexed on Google. We have done a 301 redirect of two other domains (sm-legal.cz and smm-partners.cz) which were websites for the firms prior to forming a new one. I am scratching my head over what does Google dislike so much. Any thoughts? Can the smh.cz domain - which previously had some dodgy insurance content - be the reason? Your help is much appreciated. Ondrej0