How to come up with the best title tags?
-
Hi Guys,
I know title tags is one of the most important things that google looks at, any tips or advice around how I can go about improving the ones I have currently?
I'm ranking pretty decent for all domains, slowly but surely, my main keywords are online psychics, online psychic readings, chat psychics, chat readings, tarot readings, and psychic readings. Any advice would be much appreciated, or direct me to resources I can look into helping me get onto the right path.
my website is http://bit.ly/1KTbWg0
Thanks
-
Thanks John, you have offered some real value into what I have been considering! Would love to chat more if possible! Working on backlinks at the moment blogger outreach etc
-
I would have the H1 as you state - "online psychic readings".
And yes on the final paragraph do there later. make sure you use the URL zenory.com/psychic-readings - has great SEO value.
Backlinks! Backlinks and more quality backlinks!
-
Hey John
Yes your right, the current title tags actually have done the site a world of good. We had to rebrand everything and this is the new site and brand as the site was content thin. Basically now we are looking at how we can perform better and starting on building the quality of the DA as its quiet low. But I wanted to focus my efforts on the .com my question for changing the titles would seem that maybe if we did we could do a little better however I think for now its more about creating better links and building up the authority.
My question is #1 Should the H1 be the "online psychic readings" as well
and also i have targeted online psychic readings bc yes its more niche driven but there seem to be really good traffic that come in with that keyword. Also I have a category page that is directed to "psychic readings" without the online and perhaps I could focus that as the H1 tag instead of on the home page? I hope this makes sense?
-
Benefits are massive. You should be able to focus all your link buildings efforts to one domain - ultimately obtain a higher domain authority. Think of it this way you are now presently dividing your time between three sites. You may even feel guilty working on one site and forgetting the other two.
If you think of your websites like houses. Right now you need to maintain, clean and pay for three houses. Also travel between them. If you make one big house - sure you might have to change some rooms so the New Zealanders feel at home. But it is alot easier being in the same house... Plus fix one room and it adds value to the whole house...
The big global brands - one big house... lots of great rooms accommodating different cultures.
Hopefully not too esoteric! ps main benefit long term is Domain authority, time and cost..
-
Hey John
Thanks for the update! Yes our focus is the .com so we want to build that up. However what benefits would there be for merging the other two over to the .com? I think the earlier we start the better perhaps... ?
It will definitely be something il keep on my radar!
-
Edward
The question you face is almost the classic SEO conundrum. Execute the consolidation poorly and you end up losing a lot of rankings and traffic. So it has risks and the first rule is do no harm.
I am what you call a hardliner however. I would consolidate. An eCommerce site doing well www.cottonon.com may be worth viewing. Same issue - global in different markets. One domain. Killing it.
Focusing on one domain long term will have significant benefits.
https://moz.com/blog/2-become-1-merging-two-domains-made-us-an-seo-killing
https://moz.com/blog/rebrand-or-redirect-my-site-consolidate-multiple-sites-whiteboard-friday
That said you have to consider it carefully - map out pro & cons etc. Move slowly and execute brilliantly. Certainly worth keeping on the radar. I would educate myself - talk to more people and then make a decision.
-
Hey John,
Thanks for the heads up, interesting read: i guess the only thing we are concerned about interms of moving them all to the one domain, .com is that 1 we will loose our current rankings for nz and au. and two there will be some major changes in our development, the site is custom build with payments, international currencies and timezones, internally built amongst all sort of other complicated issues we could possibly have. I will speak to my developer about it and see what other ways this can be done, but in the past we have considered this a few times and it kinda cause complications with the way we have set up the development which is why we decided to keep the cctlds. It was a question I posed here a while ago as running 3 sites almost triples the amount of time, and $ so it would be great to bring it down to one. What is your take on this from that point?
-
Hi there
Here are a couple of great resources to help with your title tags:
Title Tag Best Practices (Moz)
Title Tags & SEO: 3 Golden Rules (SEW)Remember, what you put in the title tags comes down to what your users are searching for. If their intent is not met, they are not going to click. As long as the title is relevant and catches the eyes of the user (and search engines), you will be golden.
Also, don't forget that you could do all the research in the world and Google could change your title tag - just be mindful that that could potentially happen, so don't be discouraged. Same thing with your meta descriptions (here are some great tips on click through rates around meta tags).
Don't overuse keywords or cram as much as you can in. This can come across as spammy and hurt your chances of ranking. Be mindful of length, phrasing, and branding.
Hope this helps! Good luck to you!
-
Edward
You should have a read of this blog post - considering your international expansion. I am firm believer in the one domain if at all possible concept.
https://moz.com/blog/why-cctlds-should-not-be-an-automatic-choice-for-international-
-
That is awesome Andy, thanks so much!!!!
-
Edward
Your current title chases a more niche market - "online psychic readings" as compared to "psychic readings". So any change to the title - ie deleting online - at the start could impact how you rank now for online psychic readings. It is actually a treacherous game playing with titles - especially if you rank well in key areas.
ie Big companies would do it, only whilst simultaneously running a massive above the line advertising campaign etc. Every click counts, cant afford to lose one.
Am trying to make the point a change to title is not to be done lightly. I built a tool so I can review titles, independently here is the link https://www.predikkta.com/products/free-serp-optimizer-tool.html - you can measure pixels and also see what your Ad looks like next to competitors.
All that said on your examples if you have created some strong backlinks I would jump to the latter one. But I am v concerned about your domain authority. Accordingly I would target niche until you have built up your DA a little more. I am conservative though. ie the below title is 500 pixels. Then perhaps your H1 "psychic readings".
Online Psychic Readings | Tarot, Astrology & Chat | Zenory
Moving forward this way you keep your primary keyword insitu whilst keeping working on DA for the key pages.
It is a very difficult and nebulous business advising on titles. So you know your site best and what risks you are prepared to take. The key focus for me looking at your site is DA, everything else looks reasonable...
Ask away though. Hope this is not too muddy.
-
Hi Edward,
If you are looking to find supporting keywords, a nice little tool for Wordpress is SEOpressor. It costs just a few dollars a month and allows you to get suggestions for LSI keywords. A great and inexpensive way to enhance your keyword research.
-Andy
-
Hi John,
Thanks for your advice. Yes so there are a few important keywords. The most important would be "psychic readings" I assume - as this has the most search volume but also the competition for this keyword is pretty high, would this be something I need to think about before choosing a title for that page?
My next keyword would online psychic readings - im wanting to eliminate "Free" although my competitors don't and i don't know why, but this usually brings in all the tyre kickers, and the frauds etc However, one thing i want to question, can i use psychic readings and online psychic readings as a combination on one title tag?
Say for example: home page
Psychic Readings | Online Tarot, Astrology, Chat Readings | Zenory (487 pixels)
Online Psychic Readings | Live Psychic Readings | Zenory (487 pixels) - this is what I currently have it seems to be doing well, but should be doing better im not being found for psychic readings in US or AUS - but im on page 3 in NZ.
Psychic Readings | Online Tarot, Love Readings | Zenory (487 pixels)
Psychic Readings | Online Tarot Phone or Chat Readings | Zenory (487 pixels)
-
Title tags are critical as you have pointed out. Like everything in SEO they have two competing features. The first is SEO - the words in the title are integral to tell google what you website is about. The second competing feature is clickability. Often click ability and SEO do not "intertwine" neatly.
A basic and strong title tag would be
Important Keyword | Second most important Keyword | Brand name
Psychic Readings | Online Tarot or Chat Readings | Zenory (487 pixels)
The title should be no more than 512 pixels long, otherwise it usually truncates. So if you send through a couple of options as per the above. Happy to review and discuss with you. When "deciding the title" you should always keep an eye on your H1 as they are related.
Ask away I love title tags and meta descriptions.
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
-
Title tag and user intent
I am just wondering if I create a page that present different e-bike kits and my title tag tag is "the best e-bike kits in 2019", will I rank on "e-bike kits" and "best e-bike kits" or on just "best e-bike kits" ? It seems that user intent can be tricky and sometimes a title tag can make all the difference. How about if I write "Explore Burgundy on a bike tour "to rank on "Burgundy bike tour", will I rank or is the user intent different when I write explore (meaning I am looking for something self guided instead of guided) Thank you,
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | seoanalytics0 -
Title Tag Verses H1 Tag. Is having both the same better than different if there's only one clear winner in keyword search volume
Hi Mozzers, I am going through my categories on my eccomerce hire site trying to improve things and just wanted to check this query with you My understanding is that if I have the same H1 and title tag, then that would give more weight for that keyword phrase? Would I also be correct in assuming that the H1 is more important than the title tag or should both be treated as equals in terms of SEO. My dimemla is that for certain products we hire, there's only really one clear winner in terms of keyword phrase. The others I find in keyword planner are way down the volume list , so I have tended to put the H1 and title tag as the same and then have H2 tag and a slightly different heading. Is that the best philosphy or should I really mix them up , so the the title tag, h1, h2 are different ? Also Currently My on page content mentions the the H1 tag near the beginning of the content. Is this correct or should I really be using the H2 tag phrase near the beginning of the content. For example - One of the products we hire out is carpet cleaners. Therefore the main keyword phrase is carpet cleaner hire
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | PeteC12
and for our local pages its' carpet cleaner hire <city name="">.
This is my title tag and H1 tag and then for my h2 tag , I have something like "carpet cleaning equipment" with the content
mentioning carpet cleaner hire near the beginning.</city> I don't want to look likes its over optimization or mention the word hire to much but being a hire website, it's difficult not to and other keywords that don't mention it in it, are to varied so could increase bounce rates ?. When I look in GWT against my content keywords - the word hire shows a full bar. Just wondered what peoples thoughts are if what I am doing it okay?
thanks
Pete0 -
Duplicate title tags due to lightbox use
I am looking at a site and am pulling up duplicate title tags because of their lightbox use so... So they have a page: http://www.website.com/page and then a duplicate of that page: http://www.website.com/page?width=500&height=600 on a huge number of pages (using Drupal)... that kind of thing - what would be the best / cleanest solution?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | McTaggart0 -
Link Anchor Text - Best Practice?
Moz - Open Site Explorer using the following setup: Tab: Inbound Links
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Mark_Ch
Show: "all"
from: "Only Internal" I have run a number of random tests and have noticed the following results in the link anchor text. [No Anchor Text]
company name
website url
Home
etc. What is the best practice and naming convention to be used? Regards Mark0 -
Partial duplicate content and canonical tags
Hi - I am rebuilding a consumer website, and each product page will contain a unique product image, and a sentence or two about the product (and we tend to use a lot of the same words in different ways across products). I'd like to have a tabbed area below the product info that talks about the overall product line, and this content would be duplicate across all the product pages (a "Why use our products" type of thing). I'd have this duplicate content also living on its own URL's so they can be found alone in the SERP's. Question is, do I need to add the canonical tag to this page, since there's partial duplicate content on the product pages? And if I did that, would my product pages go un-indexed?? I understand how to handle completely duplicated content, it's the partial duplicate that I'm having difficulty figuring out.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Jenny10 -
Best practices with reoccurring event listings
On our client's events page there are a few reoccurring events that each have their own detail page. I'm trying to figure out what's the best practice for minimising duplicate content. For example, for the Bribie Island Markets that repeat weekly there are 2 (+more) detailed event pages: http://www.ourbribie.com/e/bribie-island-markets/1869/2013-12-07/2013-12-07
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | michaelp85
http://www.ourbribie.com/e/bribie-island-markets/1869/2013-12-14/2013-12-14 While they both contain duplicated content, they're unique in that they display the specific events date/time. My thinking is that the future events (e.g. 2013-12-14) should have a canonical link to the upcoming/next event (i.e. 2013-12-07). However this would require constantly updating/changing the canonical links. What's the best way to deal with this from a duplicate content prospective? Any better recommendations?0 -
Best way to geo redirect
Hi I have a couple of ecommerce websites which have both a UK and USA store. At the moment I have both the UK and the USA domains sending me traffic from UK and USA search engines which means that a number of users are clicking a Google page for the store not in their location, ie UK people are clicking on a .com listing and ending up on the USA website. What is the best way to automatically redirect people to the correct store for their region? If I use an IP based auto redirect system would Google see some of the pages are doorway pages? Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Grumpy_Carl0 -
Canonical tag question
Suppose a site has two pages ( Page A ) and Page B. Both of them have pagerank, but duplicate content. The page A is ranked for keyword "seo india" and page B is ranked for keyword "seo services". If i implement canonical tag on page B, does 1. The pagerank of page B will be transfered to Page A ? 2. Does the site A now ranks for keyword "seo servicies " ( for which Page B was ranking earlier )
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | seoug_20050