Different Title Tag and Page Headline
-
My editorial team won't budge with their headlines which are excruciatingly vague ... But I have managed to convince them to let me optimize the title tags and the URLs.
Is this sub-optimal or are there some benefits to having a title tag that varies from the page headline or what our dev team calls the "reader friendly" title?
For example...
Their headline: Increase Your Retirement by 20% with This Safe, Simple Strategy
My title tag: Compound Returns: How to Increase Your Retirement 20%
Thanks for the help,
E
-
Thanks for the reply. Both answers show that there is no harm here and potentially a lot of benefits.
-
Great tips, thanks. And the percentage sign... never thought about that.
-
_Great effort. Just make sure that the Page header and Title tag are not conveying different meaning. Title tag should be using main keywords and this tag is predominantly used for search engines, whereas page headers should be used for general visitors. So, there is no harm of going a bit creative with this page header. _
-
I think there could potentially be great advantages to having a different title tag from the page headline. The title tag gives you the opportunity to boil that headline down to its most important parts.
The title tag should avoid stop words. Think about the title tag as if you were a librarian. I don't know how old you are, but remember in the old days when you had to ue a card catalog to search for things? You never used words like "for, and, the, at, with" etc. Those took up space on the cards and made things harder to find.
Here's a hypothetical example. The "reader friendly" title of the first Harry Potter Book was:
Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone
Do you know how most people search for that book? (Library or Online, doesn't matter) - right, they search "Harry Potter - Book 1"
Okay, so the best title for the page would be "Harry Potter Book 1"
You did a good job at eliminating stop words from your title. However, also be cognizant of the character limitations in Google for displaying titles. You are good with 53 characters. I'd say 59-65 absolute max. Otherwise, you risk being truncated in ways you don't want/
A word of caution. That "%" sign at the end of your title could pose a problem for some engines. It might be better to spell out "percent."
I really hope this is helpful!
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
-
Keywords on Title Tag and Meta Description?
I have question regarding the use of keywords on title tag and meta description. I will take my website as example... Title Tag: Web Design Company & Digital Marketing Agency in Jakarta Meta Description: Coriate is a full-service website design & Internet marketing firm in Indonesia. We offer the best web solutions and SEO service in the industry. My questions: Is it good? Because I followed Blue Fountain Media. They don't use same keyword on title tag and meta description. You can see on title tag I use "web design" while on meta description I use "website design". Or should I use "web design" on meta description too? Blue Fountain Media doesn't use their company name on title tag. But when I search "Blue Fountain Media" on Google, it only showed their company name. How? Their title tag was "Website Design Company & Digital Marketing Agency in NYC | BFM". Is it necessary to use H1? Because as you can see on my company website Coriate there's no H1.
On-Page Optimization | | Japracool0 -
Page Analysis - Helping Product Pages Outrank Search Results Pages
Hi! We have a lot of our search results pages that have been indexed and outrank our product pages and in some instance the actual product pages barely show up at all. Here is an example query that includes our brand name: http://goo.gl/cgB6W So, we have loads of actual product pages, video pages, etc that should be showing up here, but are not and this is just one example. Unfortunately, there are a LOT of these Search Results pages out there and utlimately we would love to de-index them altogether, but it's going to have to be carefully done. So, was wondering if anyone would want to check out one of our product pages and give any feedback as to what we could change to possibly improve rank or to make them more search friendly or hopefully to help them rise above these indexed search results pages? Here is an example product page: http://goo.gl/2R4IT Thanks!! Craig
On-Page Optimization | | TheCraig0 -
Multiple Cities in Title Tag
My question is how to avoid having a spammy title. Currently I'm working on a project where a business serves four cities, but two of them are out of its home state. I'm trying to create a title tag that is appealing to the eyes, and meets what I need it to do at the same time. I was wondering what everyone though of this sample Brand X Dealer Serving Newark, DE; New Castle, DE; Glens Mills, PA; and Springfield, PA I know that too much repetition can be a bad thing, but this might not be a big deal since they are separate instances. Let me know what you all think. Thanks!
On-Page Optimization | | OOMDODigital0 -
Title Tag Over Optimization
Hey, I've read that adding the company name to the title tag was a waste of space since the more words the less weight each one has, with all this over optimization preventive measures, should I rewrite the title tags format with company names? and if so should it be (company name): (naturally organized keywords) (naturally organized keyword) | (Company name). or can I keep it just naturally organized keywords Also I used to do (keyphrase) - (keyphrase) instead of commas, should I fix this? I asked this question on Randy's post http://www.seomoz.org/blog/6-changes-every-seo-should-make-before-the-over-optimization-penalty-hits-whiteboard-friday but didn't really get an answer. Thanks!
On-Page Optimization | | nrv0 -
Best title tag structure?
Hi, In the below example, which one do you think would work best if any. The website is called greatshoes.co.uk (fictitious) The category is 'work shoes' and a page under this cat is lets say 'Size 9 work shoes' I tend to build my title tags like this: size 9 work shoes, cheap size 9 work shoes | greatshoes.co.uk BUT I have read on here it should be more like this: size 9 work shoes < work shoes | greatshoes.co.uk Does anyone think it would make a difference when targeting for the term 'size 9 work shoes' which title tag I use. Cheers
On-Page Optimization | | activitysuper0 -
Canonical Tag for a 404 page
Hi i have a got a 404 page for example : www.example.com/404.aspx can i use canonical tag on this page so that when the search engine hits the page www.example.com/123123123 13123 it will say Will this be right method ?
On-Page Optimization | | usef4u0 -
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 -
Google seems upset that I took their advice. [Titles and alt tags for images.]
Hey all, I accidentally posted this as a private question and now want to post it publicly due to some updates (for the worse.) I'm a photographer and the site I'm talking about is my portfolio site. It is very image heavy and had basically no text. Those who have consistently beat me (positions 1,2, etc.) in SERPs for my key search phrases have a modest amount of text on their pages. I'd been doing OK in SERPs (top 3-5 for my key search phrases) over the past couple years and my site has decent age and domain authority (a good number of relevant inbound links from extremely reputable sources over the years, etc. etc.) [In case it matters, my root domain has a PageRank of 4 and I have a couple internal pages with PR5.] For years I resisted adding any text because I was trying to obey Google's rule to design "for people, not search engines." Over the past couple of months, though, I got some advice on the SEOMoz webinar about adding (relevant) alt text and body text, and also read Google's Webmaster Central article about giving images good titles and alt tags, so I decided to take the plunge about ten days ago. I went through the site and added modest amounts of relevant text to pages where it was appropriate and where it didn't detract (too much) from the design. I made sure my images had sensible human-readable alt tags that were descriptive and made sure not to do any keyword stuffing. Finally, I edited some of my page titles so that they were a little more descriptive. Again, nothing extreme or radical or spammy. (But overall, esp. from Google's perspective, there were some fairly significant changes in a short period of time.) Well.. you're all already guessing what's next. As soon as Google saw these changes, I tanked pretty badly. I went from position 3-5 on my key phrases to positions like 16-25 and spent a few days in those positions. Now I'm just gone & buried somewhere in Google's boneyard. My latest ranking report for today shows me "not in top 50" for any of my key phrases on Google. I'm #1 for many of those same terms/phrases on Bing and Yahoo. (Always have fared very well with them.) Google's webmaster tools says my sitemap is OK and most of the URLs submitted are in the index. Please tell me this is temporary, while Google deals with my changes? (Actually don't, just tell me what you really think.) 🙂 Thank you all...
On-Page Optimization | | vdms0
