Title Tags in 2013
-
For blog posts do you think it is better to use something like "Atlanta Plumbing Company" or "Choosing an Atlanta Plumbing Company" (article title). I have been using the article titles but I think it might be hindering rankings a bit. I use to use the keyword but it seems a bit spammy now.
I want to create titles for the readers but rank well too.
Any suggestions?
Thanks!
-
Jason,
Think of how many individual blog posts you're going to need to write in 2013, 2014, and beyond (one hundred, two hundred, more?) and how much social outreach you'll have to accomplish over that time in order to build the blog into a really effective marketing tool for your company. Then you gotta wonder how you can maintain interest and focus writing all those posts on the specific subject of "atlanta plumbing company" or "choosing an atlanta plumbing company". On top of that, gotta wonder how many of those social profiles you reach out to week after week after week who are going to want to share your content on the specific subject of "atlanta plumbing company" or "choosing an atlanta plumbing company". And then you gotta wonder about the readers and how their interest will be maintained while you're writing only on the specific subject of "atlanta plumbing company" or "choosing an atlanta plumbing company".
I'd say that you're on the right path in thinking that your titles seem a bit spammy, but you've gotta get off the path and get on the highway. On the highway, your blog can reach its greater potential--a vehicle that can reach and engage a community that is hungry for a wide variety of topics within your theme.
As someone here at SEOmoz is fond of saying, content needs to be exceptional, inspirational, unique, credible, fun, and beneficial to share in order to accomplish it's goal of being an effective marketing tool. I would start with that, when contemplating your titles, and then write your posts accordingly.
-
It's really important that users find what they are looking for in that the title should be as descriptive as possible otherwise they will just bounce off the page. That said, I would try to ensure that you word your titles well for SEO by keeping irrelevant stop words to a minimum and keep your primary target keywords or phrase early in the page title
-
Hey Jason, I am glad that someone really asked this question!
Well everybody wants people to read whatever they are writing on their blog and for that one of the ways is to rank the blog well in search engines from the searchable keywords like you have mentioned in your question.
Actually the keywords that you are trying to focus is one of the money making keywords within your niche and that is why it’s more competitive than other keywords that you are not focusing. I think the better idea is create natural titles that may or may not focus keywords all the time but focus on the content on the page...and give indication to Google and users about what the page is all about...
As far as targeting keywords is concern try to focus on long tail keywords with less competition so that you blog will easily rank and get some attention and if it will really worth reading you will see people share far and wide naturally through social networks, emails and all other possible mediums.
Hope this helps!
-
Have you glanced at SEOMoz's best practices for title tags? - http://www.seomoz.org/learn-seo/title-tag
In my opinion you should have the title as natural as possible and that should be the a clear label as to what your article is about. Have you looked at examples such as how SEOMoz has titles on their blog - article title | brand
In my experience you will also pick up more long tail traffic with more natural titles such as using the full title rather than just a specific keyword. It also looks less spammy and over-optimized which is something to take into consideration after recent Google updates.
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
-
Tags problem I need help
Hello I have a problem on my site and I want to help solve it I allow adding tags in search engines However, when writing new content, tags are not added to search engines This is my website link مجلة الحلوة
Technical SEO | | ahmedahmed3230 -
No Access to change duplicate product title and meta tags!?
I have a client who's website contains a php file to dynamically call a product xml file from an external source. I asked the web dev company if there was any way to access or change the titles and meta descriptions to be unique for each product and they said no, not with their system. With about 63 product pages is this going to hurt me trying to get him ranked locally? What is the best to handle a situation like this?
Technical SEO | | satoridesign0 -
Duplicate page/Title content - Where?
Hi, I have just run a crawl on a new clients site, and there is several 'duplicate page content' and 'Duplicate Page Title'' issues. But I cannot find any duplicate content. And to make matters worse. The actual report has confused me. Just for example the about us page is showing in both reports and for both under 'Other URLs' it is showing 1? Why? Does this mean there is 1 other page with duplicate page title? or duplicate page content? Where are the pages that have the duplicate page titles, or duplicate page content? I have run scans using other software and a copyscape scan. And apart from missing page titles, I cannot find any page that has duplicate titles or content. I can find % percentages of pages with similar/same page titles/content. But this is only partial and contextually correct. So I understand that SEO Moz may pick percentage of content, which is fine, and therefore note that there is duplicate content/page titles. But I cannot seem to figure out where I would the source of the duplicate content/page titles. As there is only 1 listed in both reports for 'Other URLs' Hopefully my long question, has not confused. many thanks in advance for any help
Technical SEO | | wood1e20 -
H1 - site name or page title?
Hi all, I have always used h1 tags for the site name and then h2 tags for the page title, thus: Bob's Chunky Bacon Store Smoked Bacon Bacon bacon bacon bacon etc... My reasoning for this is I believe it is semantically correct. The h1 represents a book's title and the h2 the name of a chapter. I seem to have read, in a few places, that my h1 should be the page title: Bob's Chunky Bacon Store Smoked Bacon Bacon bacon bacon bacon etc... From a SEO view, which of these is the better approach? Thanks in advance for any input.
Technical SEO | | jimneath0 -
Automate process for naming page titles?
Hi everyone, I'm new to the Moz community, but really loving it. I'm hoping some of you more experienced experts may be able to answer what is probably a pretty basic question. I'm working for a non-profit client and I used the SEOMOZ tool to run a report on their site errors. I learned that the website has 5,432 duplicate page titles. They had their website redesigned last year before I started working with them and it appears that the developers didn't take into a account the need to provide unique page title names to each page. While it may make sense to go in to add custom page titles to a handful of the pages for the site, the vast majority of the pages are allocated to products (e-commerce). Is there a script that the developers could add that would automatically add page unique page titles based on say, the title of the product? Here are a few URLs to help you get a sense of what we're dealing with. homepage: www.creativityexplored.org example level two page: http://www.creativityexplored.org/artists/douglas-sheran example product page: http://www.creativityexplored.org/shop/original-art/prints/2776/profile-of-a-lady Thank you so much for any advice you can offer. Best, Linda
Technical SEO | | LindaSchumacher0 -
Google indexing tags help
Hey everyone, So yesterday someone pointed out to me that Google is indexing tags and that will likely hurt search engine results. I just did a "site:thetechblock.com" and I notice that tags are still being pulled. http://d.pr/i/WmE6 Today, I went into my Yoast settings and checked "noindex,follow" tags in the Taxomomies settings. I just want to make sure what I'm doing is right. http://d.pr/i/zmbd Thanks guys
Technical SEO | | ttb0 -
Understanding Duplicate Titles in Wordpress
I have duplicate title errors in Wordpress and I cannot pinpoint the problem. I have my blog set up so that the home page of the blog has the most recent posts. In my campaign report somehow the page directory is being found and I can't find any links on my blog to those pages. the errors are on pages that are like the following www.example.com/blog/page/13/ www.example.com/blog/page/14/ I am using Yoast and I thought I had it set up correctly. The other pages have the correct title and canonical tags, but he urls ending with page do not, but the page directory is duplicating the home page title. How or where can i fix this issue?
Technical SEO | | hfranz0 -
Implementing Schema within Existing CSS tags
In implementing Schema with a site using CSS and containing existing tags, I want to be sure that we are (#1) using the tags effectively when used within a product detail template and (#2) not actually harming ourselves by telling Google that all products are named or described by the SS tag and not actually the product name or description (which obviously could be disasterous). An example of what we are looking at implementing is the following: Old: <ss:value source="$product.name"></ss:value> New: <ss:value source="$product.name"></ss:value> Old: <ss:value source="$product.description">New: <ss:value source="$product.description"></ss:value> Basically, is Schema at the point where the SS tag be replaced (in the eyes of the search engines) with the actual text and not the tag itself?</ss:value>
Technical SEO | | TechMama0