Duplicate keyphrases in page titles = penalty?
-
Hello Mozzers - just looking at a website which has duplicate keyphrases in its page titles...
So you have [keyphrase 1] | [exact match Keyphrase 1]
Now I happen to know this particular site has suffered a dramatic fall in traffic - the SEO agency working on the site had advised the client to duplicate keyphrases. Hard to believe, huh!
What I'm wondering is whether this extensive exact match keyphrase duplication might've been enough to attract a penalty? Your thoughts would be welcome.
-
That's an interesting thought Luke. Yes, I agree something like that would work much better. I think a group like that would need some strong affiliations with already recognised online groups of like-minded SEO people (like on Moz) to give it gravity and value, but it could work. I don't know if such a group exists.
Peter
-
Hi Peter - you make some good points.
Perhaps something like you have in public relations - perhaps you join an institute (or a new branch of Moz) by paying a fee and signing up to a code of conduct - if a client is unhappy with your conduct, they can lodge a complaint and challenge your position as a member of the said organisation. That would be a great way forward and restore some level of trust in the industry. A kind of self-regulation if you like.
-
An interesting thought but I'm not sure the industry should be regulated.
My experience when governments get involved is that they then start implementing laws and rules without really understanding the industry. This happened around 18 months ago when the EU implemented the 'cookie law', a rule to outlaw bad practice that made it harder for sites to make their pages easy to navigate and engage with and harder for users to browse the web.
In a sense, the changes Google has made to its algorithms over time have acted as a regulator. If you don't follow good practice then you will end up losing. There's lots of companies out there not just in the SEO world delivering poor, unregulated service. But SEO agencies who continue with bad practice will soon lose reputation and go out of business.
Anyway, all the best to you,
Peter -
Which is the case, unfortunately. Just auditing the backlinks. Gulp. I really do think SEO industry needs to be regulated in some way. There's just so much dubious stuff going on.
-
Yes, very odd that an SEO agency should do this.
It's a dumb tactic, but I doubt it would confer a penalty. More like downgrade the quality of the page and cause it to drop but I would be surprised if this alone would be responsible for the site you mention to suffer a dramatic fall in traffic.
If, as you say, the SEO agency was responsible for doing this, then it's likely that the same agency would have also been responsible for other dumb to verging on spammy tactics on this site with the cumulative result being a significant drop.
Peter
-
In this case I'm seeing titles like this - they're doubled up on the same page:
vacations in Florida | vacations in Florida
No duplication between pages - just the doubling up of keyphrases on each page. Very odd indeed! SEO agency concerned had actually put this in place for client.
-
Yes I agree with Chris. There are thousands of sites with duplicate page Titles. They would be typically be sites which have not been optimised at all where the company service and company name are duplicated on every page as a default setting.
I doubt whether Google pays attention to that in terms of the site trying to manipulate search results. If anything they are undermining the search performance of their site themselves by making it harder for search engines to understand the focus of each page. That an SEO company advised them to do this is the most surprising.
Peter
-
Luke,
It's unlikely that would be be enough to incur a penalty. Not that revising those title might not help but typically, that would be more along the lines of poor optimization rather than outright spam.
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
-
Landing pages, are my pages competing?
If I have identified a keyword which generates income and when searched in google my homepage comes up ranked second, should I still create a landing page based on that keyword or will it compete with my homepage and cause it to rank lower?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | The_Great_Projects0 -
Branding and Page Titles - Please Help
Hello, I have a question about page titles. How important is branding here? I'm not referring to the company name, but rather the terminology that's used as "branding language" for a company. For example, let's say that the it would be a good idea to target the keyword "Restaurant Coupons" based on search volume and competition. However, our branding adheres to the language "Dining Offers". Is it considered a bad idea to use "Restaurant Coupons" in the page title? Or is that considered inconsistent branding? Basically, I'm just trying to figure out the correct balance between the SEO value of words and adhering to a company's branding. Any help is appreciated! Thanks,
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | atmosol
Nick1 -
301 Externally Linked, But Non-Producing Pages, To Productive Pages Needing Links?
I'm working on a site that has some non-productive pages without much of an upside potential, but that are linked-to externally. The site also has some productive pages, light in external links, in a somewhat related topic. What do you think of 301ing the non-productive pages with links to the productive pages without links in order to give them more external link love? Would it make much of a difference? Thanks... Darcy
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | 945010 -
Is all duplication of HTML title content bad?
In light of Hummingbird and that HTML titles are the main selling point in SERPs, is my approach to keyword rich HTML titles bad? Where possible I try to include the top key phrase to descripe a page and then a second top keyphrase describing what the company/ site as a whole is or does. For instance an estate agents site could consist of HTML title such as this Buy Commercial Property in Birmingham| Commercial Estate Agents Birmingham Commercial Property Tips | Commercial Estate Agents In order to preserve valuable characters I have also been omitting brand names other than on the home page... is this also poor form?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | SoundinTheory0 -
2 page titles, 1 url in Google SERPS: WTF!?!?
Hey guys, Hope everybody is having a good day. Today i came across something i have never seen in the serps before that i would like to share and getting feedback on. When i search for 'woonverzekering' on google.nl #1 is: **Url: ** www.independer.nl/woonverzekering/intro.aspx
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | PrizeWize
**page titel: **Woonverzekering - Independer.nl When i search for 'woonhuisverzekering' on google.nl #1 is: **Url: ** www.independer.nl/woonverzekering/intro.aspx
page titel: Woonhuisverzekering? Vergelijk alle soorten woonverzekeringen - Independer.nl So basically 2 different queries show the same url with 2 different page titles in the serps. The only 'weird' thing i could find was a nobreakspace in the page title code: Woonhuisverzekering? Vergelijk alle soorten woonverzekeringen - Independer.nl I'm i missing something completely obvious here? Is this a commonly used technique. Is the page title getting chopped up because of ? What are they doing to get 2 page title results on 1 url?0 -
Duplicate Page Title problems with Product Catalogues (Categories, Subcategories etc.)
Hey guys, I've done a fair bit of Googling and "mozzing" and can't seem to find a definitive solution. In our product catalogue on our site we have multiple ways to access the product for navigation purposes, and SeoMoz is throwing up hundreds of duplicate page title errors which are basically just different ways to get to the same product yet it sees it as a "separate page" and thus duplicating itself. Is this just SeoMoz confusing itself or does Google actually see it this way too? For example, a product might be: www.example.com/region/category/subcategory/ www.example.com/region2/category/subcategory/ www.example.com/region/category/subcategory2/ etc. Is the only solution to have the product ONLY listed in one combination? This kind of kills our ability to have easy refinement for customers browsing the catalogue, i.e: something that falls under the "Gifts for Men" might also be a match for "Father's Day Gifts" or "Gifts for Dad" etc. Any solution or advice is greatly appreciated, cheers 🙂
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ExperienceOz0 -
Duplicate URL home page
I just got a duplicate URL error on by SEOMOZ report - and I wonder if I should worry about it Assume my site is named www.widgets.com I'm getting duplicate url from http://www.widgets.com & http://www.widgets.com/ Do the search engines really see this as different on the home page? The general drift on the web is that You site should look like Home page = http://www.widgets.com And subpages http://www.widgets.com/widget1/ Of course it seems as though the IIS7 slash tool will rewrite everything Including the home page to a slash.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ThomasErb0 -
What causes internal pages to have a page rank of 0 if the home page is PR 5?
The home page PageRank is 5 but every single internal page is PR 0. Things I know I need to address each page has 300 links (Menu problem). Each article has 2-3 duplicates caused from the CMS working on this now. Has anyone else had this problem before? What things should I look out for to fix this issue. All internal linking is follow there is no page rank sculpting happening on the pages.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | SEOBrent0