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.
Will Adding Publish Date at end of Page Title for Blog posts Hurt SEO?
-
I'd like to be able to easily track blog posts by month but in Google reports when you set a date range obviously older blog post still appear and with amount of blog posts we generate without seeing the date in the title it's not obvious what was published and when it was published. For example if a Blog Title was "/dangers-of-sharing-KM-knowledge-01-11-15 would it hurt SEO?
The reason is I'd like to have a quick way to know how new posts do each month compared to older content
-
Having a date in the URL is effective so long as the SEO friendly structure takes place before the date exactly how you mentioned "/dangers-of-sharing-KM-knowledge-01-11-15". If you change the order you run the risk of priority keywords being ignored "/**01-11-15-**dangers-of-sharing-KM-knowledge" . Also try to keep the URL short as the browser and Google will truncate the URL if it is too long which will defeat the purpose of it being visible for users. Will it hurt your SEO? ... no way, so long as you are not updating the URL when you update the page.
On a second note, the same does not apply for your titles as this is valuable real estate for primary keywords.
IDEAL : Your Primary Key Phrase | Your Secondary Key Phrase | Your Tertiary Key Phrase
IF YOU HAVE TO: Your Primary Key Phrase | Your Secondary Key Phrase - Your Company Name **NEVER : **Your Primary Key Phrase | Your Secondary Key Phrase - **01-11-15 **Reason: The main reason we do not add it to the end of the title is because that space should be used for Keywords that best describe your page only. Even when it comes to you brand, I would rather replace the company name with a keyword if I can as Google in most cases already knows who you are.
-
Will not hurt at all...other than let the reader know the date you published same...first date that is, not a subsequent update date....fyi...
-
No, because search engines look for the last time that page file has been updated, not any recorded dates. I find it's pretty helpful, especially on blogs, to leave the date for users so they can evaluate if the information is relevant or the context of when you posted it.
-
Having dates in the URLs would discourage people from clicking on older posts in the SERPs, so you would be skewing your old posts vs new posts comparison in favor of new posts. Also, evergreen content can be really great for a site but those would be hard to come by with dates in the URLs I think, even if they are still very relevant.
However, there are certainly plenty of sites, like many Wordpress sites, that have dates in the URLs automatically so there are definitely people who successfully do this.
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
-
Will properly encoded & signs hurt or help me?
Hello friends, Will properly encoding a url hurt my ranking after having it improperly coded? I want to change my & symbols to & If I go from:
Technical SEO | | sonic22
http://www.example.com/product.php?attachment=pins&model=cool To:
http://www.example.com/product.php?attachment=pins&model=cool Will I get hurt if I make the leap?0 -
Static Links in Sidebar Hurting SEO?
Our website currently has a sidebar/widget area that appears on almost all pages throughout of entire site (350 page domain). In that sidebar, we have some static links and some non-static links. Right now there are: 6 Related Post Links - Non-Static
Technical SEO | | DemiGR
1 - Call To Action - Static to a landing page
10 Calculators - Static - These calculators I think are very useful to our users (financial website). So in total 17 total sidebar links, 11 static links, and 6 which change based on the content of the page. Do you think these static links from an SEO perspective can be hurting us? Is there some sort of best practice for sidebar links in regards to quantity as well as static vs non-static? Thanks!0 -
Domain prefix changed, will this impact SEO?
Our web development team have changed our domain prefix from www to non www due to a server change. Our SSL certificate would not be recognised under www and would produce a substantial error message when visiting the secure parts of our website. To prevent issues with old links they have added a permanent 301 redirect from www. to non www. urls until our sitemap catches up. Would this impact our SEO efforts or would it have no impact as a redirect has been placed? Thanks
Technical SEO | | Jseddon920 -
Will a CSS Overflow Scroll for content affect SEO rankings?
If I use a CSS overflow scroll for copy, will my SEO rankings be affected? Will Google still be able to index my copy accurately and will keywords used in the copy that are covered by the scroll be recognized by Google?
Technical SEO | | moliver10220 -
Does Title Tag location in a page's source code matter?
Currently our meta description is on line 8 for our page - http://www.paintball-online.com/Paintball-Guns-And-Markers-0Y.aspx
Technical SEO | | Istoresinc
The title tag, however sits below a bunch of code on line 237
Does the location of the title tag, meta tags, and any structured data have any influence with respect to SEO and search engines? Put another way, could we benefit from moving the title tag up to the top?
I "surfed 'n surfed" and could not find any articles about this.
I would really appreciate any help on this as our site got decimated organically last May and we are looking for any help with SEO.
NIck
0 -
Page titles in browser not matching WP page title
I have an issue with a few page titles not matching the title I have In WordPress. I have 2 pages, blog & creative gallery, that show the homepage title, which is causing duplicate title errors. This has been going on for 5 weeks, so its not an a crawl issue. Any ideas what could cause this? To clarify, I have the page title set in WP, and I checked "Disable PSP title format on this page/post:"...but this page is still showing the homepage title. Is there an additional title setting for a page in WP?
Technical SEO | | Branden_S0 -
Multiple urls for posting multiple classified ads
Want to optimize referral traffic while at same time keep search engines happy and the ads posted. Have a client who advertises on several classified ad sites around the globe. Which is better (post Panda), having multiple identical urls using canonicals to redirect juice to original url? For example: www.bluewidgets.com is the original www.bluewidgetsusa.com www.blue-widgets-galore.com Or, should the duplicate pages be directed to original using a 301? Currently using duplicate urls. Am currently not using "nofollow" tags on those pages.
Technical SEO | | AllIsWell0 -
Does it hurt to have a dynamic counter in your page title?
Currently we work with page titles which display the number of products we have as a counter. This number is highly volatile and can change every day, so that our page title changes all the time. We did this to improve user experience, meet expectations and improve click through rates. Question is whether this can hurt our rankings and if someone has experimented with this or has experience with this?
Technical SEO | | ElmarReizen0