Title Tag - Best Practices
-
I'm pretty new to seo but think I'm starting to get a decent grasp on it. One thing I'm really struggling with is how to organize the meta title tags on my website. I work in real estate and I'm noticing a lot of my local competitors that are ranking for the top keywords seem to using that particular keyword on every title tag within their website.
An example would be www.paranych.com. Many of his internal pages have the word "Edmonton Real Estate" in the meta title tag, yet his home page is the page that is ranking for that particular keyword. It doesn't seem logical to have every one of my pages featuring the same keyword, but there are many examples within my industry of this working.
Is the best practice with meta title tags to have your keyword on every title tag of your site or just the home page?
Thx, Barry
-
This may be that they do not know better or have limited resources. It doesn't matter what a competitor is doing as you can always do better.
More than often the reason is because that is the default value for their meta tags.
Meta descriptions and meta tags in general are for as you would say it "sales pitch". Meta data holds little to no weight in ranking as mentioned before.
-
A lot of SEO clients we have are real estate agencies. We always recommend that you diversify this information so as not to canibalize your own keywords. We generally suggest location (such as Edmonton) and then other top keywords for your area, usually stuff like
Edmonton Real Estate
Edmonton Homes for Sale
Edmonton Property Listings
etc.
We also suggest that you really take advantage of specific location searches, so if you have a property listing page in a specific area, it is a good idea to include the zip code. This is where keyword data provided usually fails and you need an intimate knowledge of your area/industry because people often perform searches based on yard signs they have seen - and there will be no keyword data for this.
-
I do realize that the meta description is more of your sales pitch that shows up in the serps but am still curious why my competition would use the same keyword in all of their title tags. Would this not diminish your ability the ability to rank on that keyword?
-
There is <title>which is important both for ranking and is the headline used in the serps and then there is the <meta name="description" title="title that is display below the title in the serps"/> this is not a factor in the ranking algo, but is important as a creative.</p></title>
-
Yes, my answer was assuming yo uare talking about meta title tag.
-
Hi William, I am referring to the meta title tag. Sorry if that confused your answer. Would you answer be the same knowing this information?
-
This happens often because a lot of platforms that sites run don't allow you to manipulate every single page. It is sometimes automated.
However, most sites allow you to pick from pages and posts, which is usually what is most important. Best practice title tags are generally to create a good CTR. Title tags have really little to no weight on SEO.
Meta tags are more for CTR and attracting the right user.
Let's say you have evaluations of real estate, you target is not to sell real estate but to provide reviews. You would gear your meta tags towards evaluations and reviews and not buy and sell. Attracting the right user will give you better numbers and actual conversions. You don't want someone visiting your site if they have no chance of converting in the first place anyway.
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
-
What is the best strategy for dissolving an innocently created link network with over 100 websites?
Hello Moz Community, Over many years 120 websites were created all under a couple different organizations around the globe. The sites are interconnected via anchor text and domain name links and some redirect to larger sites. The teachings have a central theme and many tools, training programs, events, locations and services are offered on many different websites. Attached is a slice of a Majestic Link Graph showing the network. God bless Majestic for this new tool! We are looking for solutions that are efficient and effective in regards to usability, rankings and being achievable. Thank you so much for your help! Donna EJhNPqT
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Awakening-Mind0 -
Best URL structure for SEO for Malaysian/Singapore site on .com.au domain
Hi there I know ideally i need a .my or .sg domain, however i dont have time to do this in the interim so what would be the best way to host Malaysian content on a www.domainname.com.au website? www.domainname.com.au/en-MY
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | IsaCleanse
www.domainname.com.au/MY
domainname.com.au/malaysia
malaysia.domainname.com.au
my.domainname.com.au Im assuming this cant make the .com.au site look spammy but thought I'd ask just to be safe? Thanks in advance! 🙂0 -
Best Link Building Strategies in Modern SEO
Hello, In light of all the updates and also in guest blogging being only for nofollow links now, what's some of the best strategies for link building for ecommerce sites? We're in an industry where the content doesn't get linked to very much. Thanks.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | BobGW0 -
Keyword Duplication in the title
Hello, I read on this great SEO Blueprint Article here that you don't want to duplicate any words in the title tag, even one duplicate. But what if your branding and keywords both have the same word in it. For example, making the title here like this: NLP Training and Certification Center | NLP and Coaching Institute which is 66 characters by the way. Your thoughts on the duplicate word "NLP"?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | BobGW0 -
Keyword in alt tag and future G Updates
Hello, I notice that it is common practice to put the page's keywords directly into an alt tag. I don't see how this helps the user and how it helps the user using screen readers and such. Do you think future G updates will slightly penalize pages with alt tags that are just the page's keywords and not a helpful phrase? What do you recommend to put in alt tags in light of future G updates?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | BobGW1 -
Redesigning my site, and not sure what is best for seo, subfolders or direct .html links?
,I have 4 examples to choose from, what is best:? http://hoodamath.com/games/dublox/index.html http://hoodamath.com/games/dublox.html http://hoodamath.com/dublox/index.html http://hoodamath.com/dublox.html
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | hoodamath0 -
How best to do Location Specific Pages for Eccomerce Post Panda Update..
Hi , We have an eCommerce site and currently we have a problem with duplicate content. We created Location specific landing pages for our product categories which initially did very well until the recent Google Panda update caused a big drop in ranking and traffic. example http://xxx.co.uk/rent/lawn-mower/London/100 http://.xxx.co.uk/rent/lawn-mower/Manchester/100 Much of the content on these location pages is the same or very similar apart from different H1 tag, title tag and in some cases slight variations on the on page content but given that these items can be hired from 200 locations it would take years to have unique content for every location for each category... We did this originally in April as we can't compete nationally but we found it was easier to compete locally ,hence the creation of the location pages and it did do well for us until now. My question is , since the last Google Panda update, our traffic has dropped 40% , and rankings have gone through the floor and we are stuck with this mess Should we get rid off (301 ) all of the location specific pages for each of the categories ot just keep say 10 locations per cities as the most popular ones and either do No follow no index the other locations or 301's or what would people recommend ? The only examples I can see on the internet that others do with multiple locations is to have a store finder type thing... but you cant' rank for the individual product /category doing it that way... If anyone has any advice or good examples of sites I could see that employ a good location url specific method, please let me know. thanks Sarah
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | SarahCollins0 -
Hidden H1 tag - ?permissable
Until now I have been building websites either from scratch or with a template. Recently I decided to learn Adobe Dreamweaver. At the end of the first "Building a Website using Dreamweaver" lesson, the author notes the site is done but an H1 tag is missing. The instructor advises "The page doesn't have a top-level heading ( ). The design uses the banner image instead. This looks fine in a browser, but search engines and screen readers expect pages to be organized with a proper hierarchy of headings: at the top of the page, ..." The instructor then walks readers step-by-step into creating an H1 tag and using absolute positioning of -500px top to cause the tag to not be visible. My initial thought was the instructor was completely wrong for offering this advise, and users would be banned from search engines for following these instructions. I had planned to contact the writer and suggest the instructions be modified. Prior to doing such, I wanted to request a bit of feedback. The banner image's text in this example is "Check Magazine: Fashion and Lifestyle". The H1 tag that is created and positioned off-screen uses that exact same text. In an old blog comment, Matt Cutts shared "If you’re straight-out using CSS to hide text, don’t be surprised if that is called spam. I’m not saying that mouseovers or DHTML text or have-a-logo-but-also-have-text is spam; I answered that last one at a conference when I said “imagine how it would look to a visitor, a competitor, or someone checking out a spam report. If you show your company’s name and it’s Expo Markers instead of an Expo Markers logo, you should be fine. If the text you decide to show is ‘Expo Markers cheap online discount buy online Expo Markers sale …’ then I would be more cautious, because that can look bad.”" I would like to get some mozzer feedback on this topic. Do you view this technique as white hat? black hat? or grey hat?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | RyanKent0