Why is Google replacing my meta title with the business name on home page?
-
For all queries that return the home page, Google is not showing my meta title. Instead it replaced it with the official business name which of course makes it harder to rank for key terms since they don't exist now in the meta title. You can see this is you search on "mt view estate planning attorney". The site in question is dureelaw.com and the title showing is "The Law Office of Daniel L. DuRee." View the source and you'll see my meta title. Why is Google substituting it?
-
I'm back about a month later to report that it finally appears to have worked. Google is now pulling up my metatitle for a variety of queries.
Now I want to get Google to show local landing pages in the SERPS instead of the home page so that the location shows in the title and appears to be more relevant. Always a challenge. I know the standard tactics, but specific ideas are welcome. Building a silo of local pages around estate planning is hard as the topic is not really local.
-
Nuances welcome.
-
I tend to think you're right about the title. That most likely does look like a page title to Google and then you have identical titles on all pages! I replaced it with an image. We were already in the process of putting the first lines on the local pages into h1 tags, so that's done as well. It will be hard to know which one does the trick, but as long as it works I'm happy. This is standard routine SEO that needed to be done anyway.
-
"which of course makes it harder to rank for key terms since they don't exist now in the meta title"
This is incorrect. The keywords are still in your meta title. Google isn't going to ignore them for crawling/indexing purposes based on what it chooses to display. They're still in your code, still getting crawled, still totally counting.
That said, if Google thinks your title is irrelevant, doesn't match the search query well enough, etc., it will display something it deems more appropriate given the page content and searcher's query. Take it as Google's hint that your titles may need some improvement.
I agree with seowoody that you should include your branding in your title line. I'm less crazy about John's suggested title tag. I used to work for an agency that specialized in lawyers of various stripes, and I know how the competitiveness really pushes hard into the gray there, the niche is so badly overoptimized, but it just looks spammy when the second kw just repeats 2 of 3 words from the first kw... and as you've discovered, Google may replace it anyway. I would use keywords but write it for the client, like "Estate Planning Attorney in Mt. View - Duree Law".
-
In Titles google often "creates" a Title if it brand is not included in the first place. Hence we include them.
Recommend changing your Title ie Estate Planning Attorney | Estate Attorney | Duree Law
You may need to tweak the Title a few times to see what google will actually show in the SERP. But I recommend including the name of the Law firm at the end for each trial. If you use fetch for google should come up within 24 hours. Also consider changing your H1 to Mt View Estate Planning Attorney, that covers location.
Sorry if a bit blunt, but I will leave out all the standard comments re nuances of google which you are no doubt aware.
Let us know how that goes. Pretty sure it will come up trumps - and no not talking about orange wigs...
-
Google doesn’t like duplicate content in any form, including title tags. Multiple pages on your website have the very similar title tags, so Google may elect to change one or more of them in order to provide a unique description for each one.
You could try changing the making the title tags a little more unique, or swap your logo for an image instead of text, since this is where Google is pulling the "The Law Office of Daniel L. DuRee." text from.
Alternatively, this could be Google being clever and trying to push your brand (Daniel L. DuRee), as it thinks it's more useful to the searcher than the current title tag?
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
-
Google ranking content for phrases that don't exist on-page
I am experiencing an issue with negative keywords, but the “negative” keyword in question isn’t truly negative and is required within the content – the problem is that Google is ranking pages for inaccurate phrases that don’t exist on the page. To explain, this product page (as one of many examples) - https://www.scamblermusic.com/albums/royalty-free-rock-music/ - is optimised for “Royalty free rock music” and it gets a Moz grade of 100. “Royalty free” is the most accurate description of the music (I optimised for “royalty free” instead of “royalty-free” (including a hyphen) because of improved search volume), and there is just one reference to the term “copyrighted” towards the foot of the page – this term is relevant because I need to make the point that the music is licensed, not sold, and the licensee pays for the right to use the music but does not own it (as it remains copyrighted). It turns out however that I appear to need to treat “copyrighted” almost as a negative term because Google isn’t accurately ranking the content. Despite excellent optimisation for “Royalty free rock music” and only one single reference of “copyrighted” within the copy, I am seeing this page (and other album genres) wrongly rank for the following search terms: “free rock music”
On-Page Optimization | | JCN-SBWD
“Copyright free rock music"
“Uncopyrighted rock music”
“Non copyrighted rock music” I understand that pages might rank for “free rock music” because it is part of the “Royalty free rock music” optimisation, what I can’t get my head around is why the page (and similar product pages) are ranking for “Copyright free”, “Uncopyrighted music” and “Non copyrighted music”. “Uncopyrighted” and “Non copyrighted” don’t exist anywhere within the copy or source code – why would Google consider it helpful to rank a page for a search term that doesn’t exist as a complete phrase within the content? By the same logic the page should also wrongly rank for “Skylark rock music” or “Pretzel rock music” as the words “Skylark” and “Pretzel” also feature just once within the content and therefore should generate completely inaccurate results too. To me this demonstrates just how poor Google is when it comes to understanding relevant content and optimization - it's taking part of an optimized term and combining it with just one other single-use word and then inappropriately ranking the page for that completely made up phrase. It’s one thing to misinterpret one reference of the term “copyrighted” and something else entirely to rank a page for completely made up terms such as “Uncopyrighted” and “Non copyrighted”. It almost makes me think that I’ve got a better chance of accurately ranking content if I buy a goat, shove a cigar up its backside, and sacrifice it in the name of the great god Google! Any advice (about wrongly attributed negative keywords, not goat sacrifice ) would be most welcome.0 -
Should my home page be ranking for services provided?
Hello, Should I be tracking and trying to rank my home page for the services we provide? For example, I have separate pages for services that I will be ranking for, but should I also be adding those same service keywords to my tracking list for homepage? Or just merely mention that we have those services on the homepage and leave the attempted ranking of those for their service page? I hope that is clear... Thanks in advance
On-Page Optimization | | Gavinn1 -
Is the meta title written only for google (try to stuff in as many keywords as possible) or is there a user experience aspect as well?
Is the meta title written only for google (try to stuff in as many keywords as possible) or is there a user experience aspect as well?
On-Page Optimization | | whiteonlySEO0 -
2 version of meta description and title
Hi guys, I have seen two versions of meta descriptions and meta titles for one URL (this is happening on a few of my pages). Initially, I thought Google is pulling the information from my page content. However, it is not the case. I have realized the information showing on SERPs are very old description (years ago information). Just a bit background information, we had a new website launched in April this year. The issue stated since the new website launch. Anyone experienced similar situation?
On-Page Optimization | | pengiuns-al0 -
Avoid Multiple Page Title Elements...
Hi guys i'm just going trough some pages with the seomoz one page optimization tool. As one of the "easy fix" suggestions it says: "Avoid Multiple Page Title Elements" "Explanation: Web pages are meant to have a single title, and for both accessibility and search engine optimization reasons, we strongly recommend following this practice.Recommendation: Remove all but a single page title element." By single element does it mean 1 single word? Is that realistic?
On-Page Optimization | | Immanuel0 -
Home page mostly graphic image
I have a new customer that is redesigning her website. The graphic designer has designed a lovely homepage that is mostly an image with some navigation and footer area for text information. My concern is that there isn't any real call to action or anything on the homepage design other than an interesting and fun graphic. It seems like years ago this was a common practice and then later it was looked down on as not good for the user experience or SEO. What is the latest thinking on this type of design? Should the homepage (www.mysite.com) be allowed to be mostly images? Or should we focus on the optimizing the internal pages and let the homepage be more creative?
On-Page Optimization | | ChristiMc0 -
Internal Links & Title Tags, Which Page Benifits?
The best way I can explain why question is with an example. Lets say I have a parent parent page that is focusing on a broad keyword.
On-Page Optimization | | donford
I also have a sub-page which is focused more on long-tail keyword variations. When I make an internal link and give it a title tag, should I give it the long-tail keyword for the juice, or should I use the broad keyword for the parent page's relevancy? Thanks for any help, advise or pointers.0 -
Has anyone with a high number of home page tiles been effected by the panda/farmer update?
One of the sites I'm working on seems to have dropped a few spots in rankings. It has numerous home page tiles, but they are not really advertising; just links to different sections on the site. Does anyone think that might be a factor in the rankings drop?
On-Page Optimization | | J.Marie0