Numbers vs #'s For Blog Titles
-
For your blog post titles, is it "better" to use numbers or write them out? For example, 3 Things I love About People Answering My Constant Questions or Three Things I Love About People Answering My Constant Questions?
I could see this being like the attorney/lawyer, ecommerce/e-commerce and therefore not a big deal. But, I also thought you should avoid using #'s in your url's.
Any thoughts,
Ruben
-
Thanks everyone.
Happy Friday,
Ruben
-
When it comes to people, '3' is easier for them to process than 'three'. You may even get a minor speed boost when the CMS queries the DB, but I haven't tested that. It may only apply to example.com/2014/08/28/sample-post and example.com/?p=123. Basically, the numeric version is easier for machines to process as well.
However, Michael Gray at Gray Wolf SEO has one good reason why you might want to avoid using the numeric equivalent. He definitely has a point. So keep the number in the title and avoid using it in the URL, unless the information in the post - or the post itself - will never change.
There are plenty of other effective ways to increase page load speed, and that wasn't your concern anyway.
-
I would try to use both, maybe use one in the title then the other or both in the blogs posts so that you can try to rank for both, I've done that a few times.
-
I would use the number: '3'
When searching, most people will use the number instead of writing it out.
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
-
Is it necessary to have unique H1's for pages in a pagination series (i.e. blog)?
A content issue that we're experiencing includes duplicate H1 issues within pages in a pagination series (i.e. blog). Does each separate page within the pagination need a unique H1 tag, or, since each page has unique content (different blog snippets on each page), is it safe to disregard this? Any insight would be appreciated. Thanks!
Algorithm Updates | | BopDesign0 -
Complete website redesign: original domain vs subdomain vs new domain ?
Hello dear community fellas!
Algorithm Updates | | PayPro
The story goes like this: my company has a good ol' website launched back in 2008 and since then nothing much was updated there. Our rank dropped significantly because, well, barely any SEO was done for it. Me and my team decided to redesign the whole thing: content, structure, visuals, links, everything but this time really making it right. However, with our oldie we managed to get a nice user base, so we still want to get all the traffic juice out of it. Now the questions is where do you think is the best place to publish our new website: Our original domain www.companyname.com? Create a subdomain new.companyname.com? Totally new domain www.namecompany.com? Cheers!0 -
Why are Google Webmaster Tools' Google rankings different to actual Google rankings?
Dear Moz, We have noticed that according to Google Webmaster Tools one of our client sites is ranking very prominently for some of the major key phrases that we are trying to rank them for. However, when we perform a Google search for these queries, our client's content is nowhere to be seen, not even on the 5th page (we logged out of the Google account before performing the test). A long-term manual spam action on our client's site was recently lifted by Google - is it possible that Google Webmaster Tools is providing data about our client's estimated Google rankings, without taking into consideration the penalty of the manual spam action which was taken? Thanks
Algorithm Updates | | BoomDialogue690 -
Any SEO thoughts about Google's new Data Highlighter for products?
After searching around on the web for a while I couldn't find any case studies or interesting posting about Google's new feature to highlight structured data. In Google Webmaster Tools you can now tag your products to be displayed as structured data in Google's search results. Two questions that rose immediately: 1. What effect will Google's new Data Hightlighter for products have on your SEO? Can we expect better CTR's for productspage results in Google? Better conversion rates perhaps? Any case studies that show KPI improvements after using structured data for products? 2. I would love to see some examples in the search results to see what productpages would look like after Data Highlighting it. Your thoughts or input about this subject will be much appreciated.
Algorithm Updates | | SDIM0 -
Does Google or Bing use words in the page title beyond the displayed limit for ranking purposes?
Standard good practice for on-page SEO includes keeping page title length below the maximum that Google displays in the SERPs. But words in the title beyond that maximum can be indexed, even if they don't show in the SERPs for end users. For ranking purposes, is there any value in words beyond the character limit in page titles that are truncated in the SERPs?
Algorithm Updates | | KyleJB0 -
Client's site dropped completely from Google - AGAIN! Please help...
ok guys - hoping someone out there can help... (kinda long, but wanted to be sure all the details were out there) Already had this happen once - even posted in here about it - http://www.seomoz.org/q/client-s-site-dropped-completely-for-all-keywords-but-not-brand-name-not-manual-penalty-help Guy was a brand new client, all we did was tweak title tags and add a bit of content to his site since most was generic boilerplate text... started on our KW research and competitor research... in just a week, from title tag and content tweaks alone, he went from ranking on page 4-5 to ranking on page 3-4... then as we sat down to really optimize his site... POOF - he was gone from the Googs... He only showed up in "site:" searches and for exact matches of his business name - everything else was gone. Posted in here and on WMT - had several people check it out, both local guys and people from here (thanks to John Doherty for trying!) - but no one could figure out any reason why it would have happened. We submitted a reconsideration request, explaining that we knew we hadn't violated any quality guidelines, that he had less than 10 backlinks so it couldn't be bad linking, and that we had hardly touched the site. They sent back a canned response a week later that said there was no manual penalty and that we should "check our content" - mysteriously, the site started to show back up in the SERPs that morning (we got the canned response in the afternoon) There WAS an issue with NAP mismatch on some citations, but we fixed that, and that shouldn't have contributed to complete disappearance anyway. SO - the site was back, and back at its page 3 or 4 position... we decided to leave it alone for a few days just to be sure we didn't do anything... and then just 6 days later, when we were sitting down to fully optimize the site - POOF - completely gone again. We do SEO for a lot of different car dealers all over the country, and i know our strategies work. Looking at the competition in his market, he should easily be ranked page 2 or 3 with the very minimal tweaking we did... AND, since we didn't change anything since he came back, it makes even less sense that he was visible for a week and then gone again. So, mozzers... Anybody got any ideas? I'm really at a loss here - it makes zero sense that he's completely gone, except for his biz name... if nothing else, he should be ranking for "used cars canton"... Definitely appreciate any help anyone can offer -
Algorithm Updates | | Greg_Gifford0 -
I used to rank 12 or 13 for a specific search term. Now I don't show up at all. What's cuasing this?
Used to rank on the second page for a specific search query, now we don't seem to show up at all for the same query. Has Google penalized us or is something else going on?
Algorithm Updates | | wlefevre0 -
If we are getting clicks from a local one box as a citation in the serps's would we see this as the referrer in GA?
If we are getting clicks from a local one box as a citation in the serps's
Algorithm Updates | | Mediative
would we see this as the referrer in GA?0
