Fixed horrible title tag on home page, and lost ranking. Will it come back?
-
I was helping out someone on their site and its home page ranked on page 2 for their term, and the title tag was horrible. It was 160 characters long with lots of near repetitive keywords ([keyword] - adjective [keyword] - adjective [keyword] - adjective [keyword] etc.) -- typical title that Google would penalize when it got around to it.
So I created a title that made sense, for the keyword, and that followed the best practices of Google recommendations. Now it's dropped off the index. (EDIT: sorry, still in index, just not even in top 1000)
Is this something I should not have done? I was just trying to keep them from getting slammed.
And, how long should I expect it to take to get my ranking back?
This is the only page title I changed.
-
Interesting that in DuckDuckGo.com and StartPage.com it is showing with the new title wording, and in increased position (#3 on DuckDuckGo.com). Still not up there in google.
Any idea if this means anything?
-
"it would not drop off the index"
My apologies, I did say that but I meant it dropped off the rankings, not even in top 1000 now) I edited my question now to be more accurate.
-
I'd have to agree that doing what you have done should not have impacted the rankings so dramatically. I have seen minor fluctuations when modifying title tags but not to this extent. I would give it a few days to see if things settle down. If you stil see the same problems after a few days then I would suggest that something else is likely the cause of the dramatic drop in rankings.
-
Based on what you answered:
I would ask the site owner about question one. He should have a firm idea of other ranking drops or possible penalties. What other sites are doing is also a factor, but I don't see how a page would drop off the index due to title tag modification.
I have seen pages move up and down by tweaking the title tag. In my experience, when you make the title tag cleaner and less repetitive, the page ranks better. Even if it were to move down, it would not drop off the index. That seems bizarre!
But, I am speculating without knowing the site or keyword the page is ranking for.
-
- Has the site lost rankings for other pages?
I don't think so.
- Has anything else been done that might have an impact on rankings (i.e adding links, removing links)?
Nothing else has been changed.
- When you paste the URL in Google, does it come up as the first search result? If so, it was not dropped from the index.
Yes.
- Is the keywords still at the beginning of the title tag?
Yes.
- Is there another page on the site that now ranks for the site? You may have more than one page on the site targeting the same keyword.
No
-
Changing the title tag is not something that would cause that page to drop off the index. A fewof questions:
-
Has the site lost rankings for other pages?
-
Has anything else been done that might have an impact on rankings (i.e adding links, removing links)?
-
When you paste the URL in Google, does it come up as the first search result? If so, it was not dropped from the index.
-
Is the keywords still at the beginning of the title tag?
-
Is there another page on the site that now ranks for the site? You may have more than one page on the site targeting the same keyword.
-
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
-
Home page optimisation
It's not possible to add a keyword to the homepage url. Do we still add a secondary keyword along the primary one on the home page title and meta description etc. How do we make our primary keyword to dominate in this case. Thanks
On-Page Optimization | | Timberwink0 -
Multiple H1 tags on Squarespace blog page?
Hi All, I use Squarespace and while running my site (https://www.growmassagebusiness.com) through programs am seeing that my blog posts are being seen as one page with multiple H1 tags. I read through the SS help desk and found back in 2015 someone wrote that it's not a bit deal b/c of HTML5 and that the search engines will read each blog post as a sub-page. I'm not so sure about that and wondering what the experts think? If that is screwy then I'm considering possibly making each blog post it's own page rather than using their blog posting format.
On-Page Optimization | | rajam0 -
Q&A Page Titles
Hello All! I am currently updating page titles and metadata descriptions for a websites Q&A section and have run in to a problem while updating page titles. Since it is the Q&A section of the website, all of the page titles are around 100 characters and some are up to 200 characters long. Here is an example: Page Title: My child is working below grade level in math. Do I have to purchase the curriculum from the grade below as well? The problem is that this is obviously too long for a SERP to display however I know it is best practice to have matching titles on both the title tag and page title. My question is what hurts SEO value more: the title tag and title of the page not matching or having a very long title displayed on the SERP?
On-Page Optimization | | Myles921 -
Showing more Duplicate Title Tags Than WMT
This is yet another question between moz vs google WebMaster Tools. In WMT it only shows 5 pages with a total of 18 duplicate titles. But moz is showing 298. It appears the duplicates are canonical links for the most part. What is the discrepancy?
On-Page Optimization | | jamavan0 -
Duplicate Title Tags/Meta Tags for Website with Multiple Locations
I currently have an insurance website that has over 40 offices in Ontario. The site also provides online quoting.
On-Page Optimization | | MainstreamMktg
In some of our programming, we have implemented variables in the URLS that will allow the quotes to go to the specific city offices - the issue I am having is that the quote in itself is the same quote form (same title, same meta) because it's technically one page on the website. We did it this way to avoid having to update 40 forms if a field on the form were to change. Is there any way I can relieve my site of this duplicate title tag/meta tag issue? Any insight would be really appreciated - thanks so much!0 -
Ranked page is not desired page
I have a question on a problem I am currently faced with. There is a certain keyword that my employer wants to rank for. The good news is that sometimes it does rank in the top 5 pages of Google. (It drops in and out) The bad news is that it is going to a page that we need to keep, but not the ideal place we want people who are looking for that keyword to go to. I was wondering if anyone has had any experience with this type of situation and what tactic they used to get people to the better page.
On-Page Optimization | | trumpfinc1 -
Penalty for Changing Home Page Title Tags
Hey Mozzers I'm certain of the answer to this question, however I wanted to get some input from the experts in Moz-land to hopefully provide some additional perspective. I recently disagree with a client's assertion that there is some penalty Google levels for changing the title tags of your home page. Now, I understand changing the title tags can influence serp rankings, however, is anyone aware of some penalty Google levels for simply changing the title tags? Most of what I've read and experienced has people changing them all the time without some phantom penalty. It seems to me a problem of correlation = causality, in that people often attribute a drop to an action that may not have actually been the cause. Anyway, if you have any particular insight on this top I would appreciate it greatly. thanks!
On-Page Optimization | | BrandLabs0 -
Linking Back to the Same Page
What are the other seo's opinions on linking the same keyword you are targeting lets take an example like Trampolines. So we have a Online shop selling trampolines would you feel it a good or bad thing to link the keyword trampolines from the homepage to the homepage almost creating a loop. Some SEO's say yes some say no ?
On-Page Optimization | | onlinemediadirect0