Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
Unique page URLs and SEO titles
-
www.heartwavemedia.com / Wordpress / All in One SEO pack
I understand Google values unique titles and content but I'm unclear as to the difference between changing the page url slug and the seo title.
For example:
I have an about page with the url "www.heartwavemedia.com/about" and the SEO title San Francisco Video Production | Heartwave Media | About
I've noticed some of my competitors using url structures more like "www.competitor.com/san-francisco-video-production-about"
Would it be wise to follow their lead? Will my landing page rank higher if each subsequent page uses similar keyword packed, long tail url? Or is that considered black hat?
If advisable, would a url structure that includes "san-francisco-video-production-_____" be seen as being to similar even if it varies by one word at the end?
Furthermore, will I be penalized for using similar SEO descriptions ie. "San Francisco Video Production | Heartwave Media | Portfolio" and San Francisco Video Production | Heartwave Media | Contact" or is the difference of one word "portfolio" and "contact" sufficient to read as unique?
Finally...am I making any sense? Any and all thoughts appreciated...
-
Have you tried tools such as pingdom, page speed insights or yslow? These can all give you a good idea where to start.
-
I'd more than likely go for something different on each page. Make sure you're describing the page content accurately in the title.
You don't need to include your brand in any of the titles. Some people believe it's better to have the brand name, some don't. Amazon for example - they're a strong, well known brand - so it makes sense to include the brand name as it can encourage click throughs from Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs). For a business like yours I wouldn't think it'd make a big difference either way. As you're targeting local customers, it could result in extra exposure for your brand name if you include it, though the longer a title tag the less emphasis is given to each keyword in the SERPs - so that's a small reason not to include it. If you go back to what I said about thinking about the user, then you'd have the brand name on the homepage and about page for definite, but other pages - it probably doesn't matter so much. As you noticed on another thread, sometimes Google will add your brand name anyway! You could also consider how people's bookmarks display, but again I'll say - don't worry about this too much!
In terms of your question about speed, there are a few resources you can put your URLs into that will give you feedback and recommendations. Here are 2:
tools.pingdom.com/fpt/
http://developers.google.com/speed/pagespeed/insights/ -
Thanks, Alex. Yeah, my instinct was that the keyword packed urls were spammy so I'll keep them simple.
I feel like I'm beginning to wrap my head around this. So to clarify further...
If I'm trying to get my home page to rank for "San Francisco Video Production" should I not include that phrase at all in my title tags or is it still advisable providing it varies slightly and clearly relates the intended purpose of the page?
For example:
San Francisco Video Production Portfolio | Heartwave Media
or would it make more sense to let that term be exclusive to the home page and do something more like:
Corporate and Commercial Video Portfolio | Heartwave Media
Right now I have:
San Francisco Video Production | Portfolio | Heartwave Media
PS:
Do I even need to include my brand in the titles outside the landing page?
-
How can I make my page load faster. I believe it's a bit slow...
-
"I have an about page with the url "www.heartwavemedia.com/about" and the SEO title San Francisco Video Production | Heartwave Media | About"
I'd say the URL you have already is perfect. For the "SEO title" (title tag) I'd go with "About Heartwave Media" - the unique part of the title tag should be at the start.
Think about what is best for the human visitors to your website, and not the search engine crawlers. People expect an "about" url to be at www.example.com/about or www.example.com/aboutus - it's also memorable and easier to type in. I've always said this is the best way, and Google is getting smarter at ranking content that is useful for searchers: http://moz.com/blog/be-the-result-that-google-wants-to-rank
If every URL on your page had "san-francisco-video-production-" in it, it's not user-friendly, and it looks spammy, so to Google it's definitely going to look spammy, either now or at some point in the future.
Also be aware of keyword cannibilisation. You want search engines to know your website is about video production, but you don't want to confuse them over which page they should rank highest. This is an old article but still relevant: http://moz.com/blog/how-to-solve-keyword-cannibalization It's fine to mention "video production" and variations of that theme throughout your website, but be aware of the cannibilisation issue. If you think it's most important to rank for "San Francisco Video Production" then that should be your homepage title, arguably with your brand name at the end.
-
Hey Keith,
Let's discuss things one by one
1. Title Tags
- Too long! It must be around 60 Characters with spaces (Some Suggests 70 as well). So, try to fix it
- Be unique for every page. Like for About Page, you can use "About | San Francisco's Leading Video Production Company". For Services "Video Production Services San Francisco". Search more keywords for your business (Google Keywords Tool)
- Use your brand as blog title. Using keyword is not very recommended as it leads to increase length and over -optimization
2. Meta Description
- Unique description of around 160 words with proper optimization of keywords is ideal
- Your Meta descriptions are not optimized at moment. Please optimize them
3. URL Structure
- Optimized URL is not all about placing keywords in URL
- Deliver authority to your pages and they will start to rank
I hop this will help!
Regards
-
I've already crawled the site. Quite a few titles appear to be rather long. Most of the titles use San Francisco Video Production.
Only include the keyword in the title if that's what the page is about. Having a keyword in the slug is a good idea, again just don't go overboard. One page should suffice, but that alone won't guarantee the first page (No one and nothing guarantees first page results).
You have to look at domain age as well. Does one of your competitors have a couple of years on you? Do they have ten years on you? That's a big thing.
Where are you're competitors getting links? Are these links good, will they drive traffic? That's another concern.
I like to put page speed/usability in the first order, but many people say it's second order. Does your site load well/fast? What can you do to reduce page load speed?
These are some really basic things you have to consider. If you've answered them properly, your situation should improve.
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
-
Unlisted (hidden) pages
I just had a client say they were advised by a friend to use 'a bunch of unlisted (hidden) pages'. Isn't this seriously black hat?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | Jul 31, 2017, 11:27 AM | muzzmoz0 -
Vanity URLs Canonicalization
Hi, So right now my vanity URLs have a lot more links than my regular homepage. They 301 redirect to the homepage but I'm thinking of canonicalizing the homepage, as well as the mobile page, to the vanity URL. Currently some of my sites have a vanity URL in a SERP and some do not. This is my way of nudging google to list them all as vanity but thought I would get everyone's opinion first. Thanks!
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | Nov 9, 2015, 8:21 PM | mattdinbrooklyn1 -
I'm changing title tags and meta tags, url, will i loose my ranking?
Hi Guys QUESTION: I'm currently going through a re-design for my new website that was published in November 2014 - since launching we found there were many things we needed to change, our pages were content thin being one of the biggest. I had industry experts that came in and made comments on the title tags lacking relevance for eg: our title tag for our home page is currently "Psychic Advice" most ideal customers don't search "Psychic Advice" they search more like "Online Psychic Reading" or Psychic Readings" I noticed alot of my competitors also were using title tags such as Online Psychic Readings, Free Psychic Readings etc so it brings me to my question of "changing the title tags around. The issue is, im ranking for two keywords in my industry, online psychics and online psychic readings in NZ. 1. Our home page and category pages are content thin.... so hoping that adding the changes will create perhaps some consistency also with the added unique and quality content. Here is the current website: zenory. co.nz and the new one is www.ew-zenory.herokuapp.com which is currently in development I have 3 top level domains com,com.au, and co.nz Is there anyone that can give me an idea if I were to change my home page title tag to **ZENORY | Online Psychic Readings | Live Psychic Phone and Chat ** If this will push my rankings down though this page will have alot more valuable content etc? For obvious reasons im going to guess it will make drop, I'm wondering though if it is worth changing the title tags and meta descriptions around or leaving it as is if its already doing well? How much of a difference do title tags and meta descriptions really make? Any insight into this would be great! Thanks
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | Apr 16, 2015, 8:20 AM | edward-may1 -
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 | Feb 22, 2015, 2:14 PM | 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 -
Adult Toy Store SEO
Hi fellows, I'm not so strange to SEO. I have been promoting our spiritual network through SEO and we have received great returns from it. I'm planning to promote an adult toy store via SEO. I have never done any adult store promoting before but I think there are a lot of down sides to it, such as: #1 When I search related keywords many porn websites show up; I assume it seems spammy to google's eye. Also most of the links that I will get are probably from porn websites due to relevancy. #2 Many of our returning customers are coming from retargeting but I assume there is no adult promotion via google display. Is that right? (It's not SEO related) I'm wondering to know if google is against adult content in any way? Any feedbacks are appreciated.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | Feb 3, 2015, 7:43 AM | Arian-Ya0 -
Why does expired domains still work for SEO?
Hi everyone I’ve been doing an experiment during more than 1 year to try to see if its possible to buy expired domains. I know its considered black hat, but like I said, I wanted to experiment, that is what SEO is about. What I did was to buy domains that just expired, immediately added content on a WP setup, filled it with relevant content to the expired domain and then started building links to other relevant sites from these domains.( Here is a pretty good post on how to do, and I did it in a similar way. http://searchenginewatch.com/article/2297718/How-to-Build-Links-Using-Expired-Domains ) This is nothing new and SEO:s has been doing it for along time. There is a lot of rumors around the SEO world that the domains becomes worthless after they expire. But after trying it out during more than 1 year and with about 50 different expired domains I can conclude that it DOES work, 100% of the time. Some of the domains are of course better than others, but I cannot see any signs of the expired domains or the sites i link to has been punished by Google. The sites im liking to ranks great ONLY with those links 🙂 So to the question: WHY does Google allow this? They should be able to see that a domain has been expired right? And if its expired, why dont they just “delete” all the links to that domain after the expiry date? Google is well aware of this problem so what is stopping them? Is there any one here that know how this works technically?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | Jan 27, 2014, 7:54 PM | Sir0 -
Pages linked with Spam been 301 redirected to 404\. Is it ok
Pl suggest, some pages having some spam links pointed to those pages are been redirected to 404 error page (through 301 redirect) - as removing them manually was not possible due to part of core component of cms and many other coding issue, the only way as advised by developer was making 301 redirect to 404 page. Does by redirecting these pages to 404 page using 301 redirect, will nullify all negative or spam links pointing to them and eventually will remove the resulting spam impact on the site too. Many Thanks
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | Nov 11, 2014, 8:55 PM | Modi0 -
href="#" and href="javascript.void()" links. Is there a difference SEO wise?
I am currently working a site re-design and we are looking at if href="#" and href="javascript.void()" have an impact on the site? We were initially looking at getting the links per page down but I am thinking that rel=nofollow is the best method for this. Anyone had any experience with this? Thanks in advanced
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | Jun 18, 2013, 10:33 PM | clickermediainc0