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.
Best Practices for Homepage Title Tag
-
Hi,
I would like to know if there is any update about the best practices for the homepage title tag.
I mean, a couple of years ago, it was still working placing main keywords in the homepage title tag. But since the last google SERP update, the number of characters that are being shown were reduced, and now we try to work with 55 and 56 characters. That has reduced our capacity of including many keywords on the title tag.
Besides, search engines are smarter now to choose the correct inner page to show in SERP.
But I am wondering if the Homepage Title should have a branded orientation or should include main keywords, cause it is still working that strategy.
I would appreciatte any update in this issue.
Thank you!
-
Thanks again!
-
Correct - I can give you a trick though.
If the SERP is a high value page. Thousands if not millions of dollars has been spent on Adwords A/B testing the Ads that work on that page. When you frame your meta description and Title if you can - take into account the top Ads that companies keep on replaying. They would not keep running them, if not highly successful on that page.
Go get them...
-
Thank you!
-
Thank you Tom!
For sure, a ctr optimized title works better. I still don't know if having less kws in title tag pays the worth...
I still don't know, what would be better
Attractive title, but less keywords.
or
less attractive title and more keywordsSpanish language makes it a little more difficult, cause generally words are longer, and you cannot say too much...
Maybe the only way is testing for each case, what works better.
I wish it were esier!Thank you!
-
Thank you John for your detailed answer! Very interesting insights
It seems that there is not easy way and not a general answer to this question. -
Interesting responses - we specialize in title tags and descriptions. There is no uniform practice as such. I disagree more with Tom on the above, but he is also right! The suggested method by Alick is I believe still generally the best way forward.
That said as Tom pointed out clickability should also be an integral feature in how you form the Title tag and description. So there is a trade off - and difficult often to find the balance SEO -v- Clickability. High traffic pages should have alot of thought and consideration - impacts can be massive.
The positive is with the new search traffic data available in WMT's you can try a few options over several weeks. In the new WMT's you can monitor each page more accurately and the effect of Position, Impressions, Clicks and CTR changes. Our experience is that with changes to the Title & Description & the subsequent Clicks on page google re-evaluates "the page relevance to the query" to answer a "searchers query". Google re-sets or re-tests you. Google either then "publishes the page on more or less searches" and google monitors searchers behavior on the page when people click through, for stickiness.
A good Title tag will have strong keyword elements and this can be be measured in WMT's as Google places the Result on more "searched pages". Immediately after indexing the page position may drop and likewise CTR. However the clicks go up. Why does this happen? It is because google believes the new result answers more searchers queries. Then the google tests how people respond to the page when they click through - if positive the page position climbs on the new pages - if there is no stickiness (ie they pogostick) it declines.
If google believes the new page is answering a "searchers query" then the page ranking generally will slowly increase, and likewise CTR.
Anyway maybe got a bit off track. But feel free to ask any questions. ps Yes I know google state CTR is not a ranking factor however they do take stock of what customers do on a page.
-
I disagree with the post above.
The most important thing for your title tag is to make it compelling enough to click. It's your biggest shop window - you need to use the space. A "Keyword - Keyword | Brand" isn't going to do that.
You will, of course, want to include your primary keyword in there, but you tell me which of these you'd prefer to click:
"Blue Widgets - Red Widgets | The Widgets Co"
"Cheap Blue Widgets - Free USA Shipping! | The Widgets Co"
Try and get your key selling points in the title tag as often as your keywords. Give the user a reason to click.
In addition, title tags are truncated/shortened based on character width, not the number characters. Dr Pete at Moz put together a great preview tool that you can check your title tags in to make sure they won't be shortened.
Hope this helps.
-
Hi,
Optimal format for any page title tag is **Primary Keyword - Secondary Keyword | Brand Name. **
You can use it same for homepage also. If a brand is well-known enough to make a difference in click-through rates in search results, the brand name should be first. If the brand is less known or relevant than the keyword, the keyword should be first.
If you keep your titles under 55 characters, you can expect at least 95% of your titles to display properly
Hope this helps.
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
-
Ranking dropped after changing title tag
I recently changed my company's site homepage title tag to make it start with our target keyword. The page was originally at page #7 or #8 and dropped to page #17 directly after I changed the page title. Is this normal? Is it's a temporary drop or should I change it back to the previous title.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ForumOne0 -
SEO Best Practices regarding Robots.txt disallow
I cannot find hard and fast direction about the following issue: It looks like the Robots.txt file on my server has been set up to disallow "account" and "search" pages within my site, so I am receiving warnings from the Google Search console that URLs are being blocked by Robots.txt. (Disallow: /Account/ and Disallow: /?search=). Do you recommend unblocking these URLs? I'm getting a warning that over 18,000 Urls are blocked by robots.txt. ("Sitemap contains urls which are blocked by robots.txt"). Seems that I wouldn't want that many urls blocked. ? Thank you!!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | jamiegriz0 -
Faceted Navigation URLs Best Practices
Hi, We are developing new Products Pages with faceted filters. You can see it here: https://www.viatrading.com/wholesale-products/ We have a feature allowing to Order By and Group By, which alters the order of all products. There will also be the option to view Products as a table, which will contain same products but with different design and maybe slightly different content of each product. All this will happen without changing the URL, https://www.viatrading.com/all/ Is this the best practice? Thanks,
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | viatrading10 -
Splitting One Site Into Two Sites Best Practices Needed
Okay, working with a large site that, for business reasons beyond organic search, wants to split an existing site in two. So, the old domain name stays and a new one is born with some of the content from the old site, along with some new content of its own. The general idea, for more than just search reasons, is that it makes both the old site and new sites more purely about their respective subject matter. The existing content on the old site that is becoming part of the new site will be 301'd to the new site's domain. So, the old site will have a lot of 301s and links to the new site. No links coming back from the new site to the old site anticipated at this time. Would like any and all insights into any potential pitfalls and best practices for this to come off as well as it can under the circumstances. For instance, should all those links from the old site to the new site be nofollowed, kind of like a non-editorial link to an affiliate or advertiser? Is there weirdness for Google in 301ing to a new domain from some, but not all, content of the old site. Would you individually submit requests to remove from index for the hundreds and hundreds of old site pages moving to the new site or just figure that the 301 will eventually take care of that? Is there substantial organic search risk of any kind to the old site, beyond the obvious of just not having those pages to produce any more? Anything else? Any ideas about how long the new site can expect to wander the wilderness of no organic search traffic? The old site has a 45 domain authority. Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | 945010 -
Competitor Title, can I use the same???
there are some pages, my competitor is ranking well and also, we have done page optimization it is 100% for page title keywords as im going to use the same title of the competitor? Will this affect me? Pls suggest wht should I do..
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Rahim1190 -
Duplicate Title tags even with rel=canonical
Hello, We were having duplicate content in our blog (a replica of each post automatically was done by the CMS), until we recently implemented a rel=canonical tag to all the duplicate posts (some 5 weeks ago). So far, no duplicate content were been found, but we are still getting duplicate title tags, though the rel=canonical is present. Any idea why is this the case and what can we do to solve it? Thanks in advance for your help. Tej Luchmun
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | luxresorts0 -
Wordpress Tag Pages - NoIndex?
Hi there. I am using Yoast Wordpress Plugin. I just wonder if any test have been done around the effects of Index vs Noindex for Tag Pages? ( like when tagging a word relevant to an article ) Thanks 🙂 Martin
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | s_EOgi_Bear0 -
Best practice for duplicate website content: same root domain name but different extension
Hi there I have a new client who has two websites: http://www.bayofislandsteambuilding.co.nz
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | turnbullholdingsltd
http://www.bayofislandsteambuilding.org.nz They are the same in every regard apart from the domain extension (.co.nz & .org.nz) which is likely to be causing them issues with Google ranking given the huge amount of duplicate content. What is the best practice approach to fixing this? Normally, if I was starting from scratch, I would set one of the extensions as an alias which redirects to the main domain. Thanks in advance. Laurie0