Mobile homepage title is showing unrelated text
-
Hi all,
I've read the FAQs and searched the help center. My URL is: http://www.leibish.com/I just discover it today - when searching on mobile for the brand name (search for "Leibish") I find the following title: Reply (see the attached image).Also, when searching for site:leibish.com +reply you'll find at least a few dozens indexed pages with this title.I checked for the following:1. Link bombing - check with ahrefs and majestic - everything seemed fine.2. Alt tag or other hidden text - couldn't find anything. 3. DMOZ or Yahoo directory submissions with this anchor text - yet, nothing.Besides the fact that I must fix this issue I find it fascinating from the SEO perspective. I need the big guns in here - can you help my resolve this mystery? :-)Thanks...
-
Hi Kristina,
Thanks for that, I really appreciate it. I'll follow Rand's tweet for additional insights.
-
Hi Shahar,
Okay, this one has stumped me enough that I reached out to Moz associates, who were equally surprised. Rand tweeted about it, and the SEO of another site has the same problem, but no one can see anything that you or they are doing that's wrong enough to warrant this. Google's clearly got a bug.
So, my (and Rand's) broad advice is to make your brand as clear as possible:
- Make sure that all of your page titles end in your brand name. I know that you've just updated your blog posts to append your brand name, but double check that there aren't other pages on your site without it.
- Make sure that your title tag structure is clear. You have some title tags that start with your brand name and others that end in it. Choose one or the other (I prefer to end with it) and set that up across the whole site. The only exception here is your homepage, which can start with your brand when everything else ends in it.
- Use your brand name on your page more often. Leibish is on your homepage 3 times; my company's homepage uses our brand name 21 times. Don't do this to the point of keyword stuffing, of course, but find ways you can use it more often.
That's all I've got - we're all keeping our fingers crossed for you! Let us know if things start to right themselves.
Best,
Kristina
-
Gosh, this is so weird.
I will say, it looks like on desktop results all of the pages that end in "- Reply" are your blog pages which haven't been recrawled since you appended your brand name. You might want to go into GWT (or, Search Console, now, because Google likes keeping us on our toes) and "Fetch" the top pages that show up with "- Reply" and ask Google to add them to the index. Hopefully, if Google sees all of these pages showing up with your proper brand, it'll figure things out quicker.
-
Not really. I can only think of the Facebook blog comments (with the word reply), but it doesn't make sense Google would use it that way.
-
I thought of that, but from what I remember, you still have <title>s on the mobile version of the HTML, right?</p> <p>Also, I double checked, and "site:leibish.com reply" returns desktop results with "- Reply" appended, too, though it looks like it's only doing that to your blog pages. Do you have any internal settings in the blog that may be off?</p></title>
-
Hi Kritina,
Thanks for the very through answer. We have implmented the schema.org and removed the "buy" keywords from all the titles.
However, it still seems we see the reply in the titles.
I thought about other option - perhaps it's concerning the mobile serving - they use the dynamic serving method. Do you think there might be an issue in here?
-
Wow. This is a weird one.
The way Google has used "Reply," it seems to think that's your brand name. All of the pages that show up with "Reply" in the page title other than your homepage have " - Reply" appended to the end, like a brand. I've seen Google do this a lot when page titles are just the title of the article, without the brand appended.
The question I can't answer is, why does Google think your brand name is Reply? One really out there idea I have: does Leibish sound like any words in Hebrew that Google may think it's translating for us?
Anyway, my guess is that your unspoken question is, how do I get Googlebot Mobile to label my site correctly? I would:
- Append your actual brand name to the end of every page title on your site. It looks like you rarely do this, so Google isn't seeing your brand name in <title>tags at all, which may be confusing it.</li> <ul> <li>Your titles are already on the long side, so I'd take this time to trim them as well. I like to use <a href="http://www.seomofo.com/snippet-optimizer.html">SEOmofo </a>to test out page titles as I write them.</li> <li>My first suggestion is for you to cut out the SKU - people rarely search for those, and if they do, Google will match them with the text on your page.</li> <li>Also, be a bit less sales-y. Google doesn't love "Buy" in page titles, which you have on your category pages.</li> </ul> <li>Use schema.org to mark up your site, labeling Leibish as the "Name" and probably marking up your address and phone number while you're at it. </li> </ul> <p>I only have two bullets because really...it seems like Google is being dumb here.</p> <p>Anyway, I hope this helps! I'm sorry I wasn't able to come up with more insights. Let us know how things go.</p> <p>Best,<br />Kristina</p></title>
-
Hi Umar,
Nope, but we'll implement it.
However, I'm not sure that's the issue. That might resolve this, but still we don't understand how the "reply" came out. It seems to me it indicates a much wider issue. Also, the post you provided is not exactly the same, as it's related to a scenario in which a page have two title tags. That's not the case. Furthermore, we still don't have a clue where the "reply" came from.
-
Hey Shahar,
This is a usual tactic from google especially in desktop searches. Sometimes it creates own titles if it finds yours to be short, over-used, poorly written & stuffed with keywords.
As far as the mobile in concerned, have you tried to use Schema.org's JSON/ microdata markup?
JSON:
Microdata:
<title itemprop="name">Your WebSite Name</title>I'm sure when next time Google index your page, your own title tag would appear.
Do check out these resources:
https://moz.com/ugc/google-serp-test-multiple-page-title-meta-description-tags (Check out the comments section too)
https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/35624?rd=1Hope this helps to solve your mystery
Thanks,
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
-
A grade optimised posts not showing in SERPs
Hi all, I've been using Moz to research, optimise and grade a broad range of copy and blog posts over the years. After the optimisation process I've always seen a relatively quick improvement of pages/posts in SERPs. I am currently working on a new website launched earlier in the year on a subdomain. There's a sitemap, fresh content added every month and the site has an verified Google Analytics and Search Console account. The content is quite niche with low traffic data for related terms, however, I am finding that after three or four weeks the optimised posts aren't displaying in the top 50 results in Google. These are the posts: https://sykeshome.europe.sykes.com/cut-the-cost-of-customer-support-use-a-work-at-home-model/ - optimised for "Cut the cost of customer support" (and also "Cut the cost of customer support: use a work-at-home model") https://sykeshome.europe.sykes.com/quality-and-compliance-in-a-work-at-home-environment/ - optimised for "Quality and compliance" (and also "Quality and compliance in a work-at-home environment") As a new website launched on a subdomain there aren't currently any inbound links, but I wanted to know if I am simply being impatient in expecting the above posts to rank higher (if only slightly), or if there could be a reason optimised content with a Moz A grade isn't showing in the first 50 results. Any advice or pointers would be much appreciated. Jonathan
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | JCN-SBWD0 -
Company Name in Home Page Title? If and Where?
My guess is you want to do the {title} | {company name} format as I would suspect Google gives slightly more weight to the words at the beginning of the title? (This is assuming your company name isn't a generic word or you are specifically trying to rank your home page for your company name when it isn't ranking well already) But what about cases where you have like 5 or 6 keywords that are really important and used in the title gives you like 50 characters and your company name pushed it up to like 65 increasing the chance Google will use some other source to list the name of your home page in the search results? Obviously one can experiment, but wondering what the general consensus is - long keyword title, or longer title with company name? The company name can be included in the meta description and the domain name of the url displayed also gives the indication to the company. But maybe the algo "respects" long itles that have company name more than ones without as then it looks more like a keyword stuffing title? So many factors to consider. Yes - on page SEO isn't just about the title, but for this thread I'm just talking home page title.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Wizkids9641 -
Would google consider this the anchor text?
Hi guys, For a button based link, can you define the anchor text google will use. I have attached screenshot of what i mean. Cheers. geavig
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | bridhard80 -
Drop in Mobile & Tablet Rankings
We have pretty strong rankings and have done since we launched our business in 2004. Over the past two months, we have seen a strong growth in rankings after a bit of a drip last year, however over the past week we have seen a significant drop off in organic traffic. Further analysis has shown that this is coming from mobile/tablet traffic, as the desktop traffic has been fairly consistent. There does appear to be a drop (across all main keywords) on mobile/tablet, but again there is no noticeable drop in desktop rankings. I am obviously aware Google treats these differently, but we can find no obvious reasons why this might have occurred. It is almost as if some sort of penalty has been applied on mobile/tablet only. There are no warnings or obvious problems in webmaster tools and our mobile/tablet site is mobile optimised. At a bit of a loss and would appreciate a bit of guidance in where you think we should start to understand what is causing this and how we should go about correcting it. Thanks in advance for the help.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | simonukss0 -
Category Page Outranks Homepage
I have an online party store and when I search for broad industry terms: (party supplies & party decorations) I notice that one of my category pages outranks the homepage. The homepage's Page Authority is better and more external links pointing to the homepage. Is there s technical SEO problem? Why would a category page outrank the homepage?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | PartyStore0 -
Title Tag Best Practices
In light of all the Google updates in 2013, have you updated/changed your title tag best practices? Is the format of (Keyword | Brand) still working well for your optimization efforts or have you started incorporating an approach similar to this format . (Keyword in a Sentence | Brand) Thanks in advance for your opinions.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | SEO5Team0 -
Page Titles of Blog
Hi, Should all the page titles of our blogs include a Keyword(s) and\or our website name?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Studio330 -
Mobile alternates and redirects
Hi! We have a desktop version of our site at http://www.domain.com, and some weeks ago, we launched a mobile edition at http://m.domain.com, replicating the most important sections of the site, but not yet all of them. Actually, if you access with a mobile device userAgent to any desktop url you are redirected to the home of the mobile web. This is the only redirect implemented about mobile and desktop versions. A) Shall we also redirect "Googlebot-Mobile" to our mobile site, or it could be considered cloaking?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | marianoSoler98
B) Its necessary to implement the rel="alternate" media="handheld" tag in all of our Desktop SEO URLs? And in our mobile ones? Can't it be implemented via sitemaps like the rel="alternate" hreflang="x" tag?
C) Would the linkbuilding job done on the Desktop version affects the Mobile also, or we would still need to do a separate job? Thanks!0