How would changing every title tag on your site at once affect SEO?
-
We are moving our website to a new CMS, and working with a vendor who would like to change the title tags from the current format to a breadcrumb structure. Our fear is that this may negatively impact the current optimization efforts in place. Our current title tags are a mixed bag of good, bad and neutral, but some have been optimized for best practices. Does anyone have any insight on the effect we would see if everything were changed at once, or any suggestions on how we could test this before we launch the "new" site?
Thanks!
-
Thanks for your input everyone!
-
No problem Cesar.
With 1500 pages, the most time-efficient thing to do right now is to keep and/or write your own for the most important landing pages and use a different template format for the others.
It's not reasonable to go writing 1500 page titles and meta descriptions right now but for at least your primary landing pages (if it's ecommerce then your category and subcategory pages), you should be writing them manually.
As for the other pages, using a templated approach is your best bet for the time being but the breadcrumb style will still give you quite a lot of duplication which is a bit of a worry. If you have 200 products under a single subcategory, that's 202 pages that all have the same keyword(s) in the title:
Category
Category - Subcategory
Category - Subcategory - Product 1
Category - Subcategory - Product 2
Category - Subcategory - Product 3
etcA better-templated approach for an ecommerce site is to use basic product info and your brand as the page title.
For example, _iPhone 6s Replacement Screen - VX902 | FoneScreenz _
In this example it includes the name of the product on that page, and a product code which would both be variables, as well as the business name (FYI the product code and business are fabricated). This covers users searching by either product name or the specific code and is descriptive enough that it will do just fine.
Basically, the template would look something like:
[Product Name] - [Product Code] | Business Name
-
Thanks Chris and Erick,
You both touch on something that we are concerned about... Is moving to a breadcrumb structure going to make the tags too generic and negatively impact the ones we have optimized to be unique and attention grabbing? (And yes, Chris, that is a good example of the structure it would become)
On one hand, we have some title tags that were written a few years ago when keyword stuffing was encouraged. Obviously these need to be changed, so in this case we would consider it a positive to move to a breadcrumb structure to at least wipe any negative effects of keyword stuffing, even if the result isn't the most relevant.
On the other hand, we have gone through and edited the title tags of some pages so they are optimized for length, keyword placement, etc. and these are the ones we don't want to lose.
Our biggest concern, however, is the ones we don't know about. We are under a bit of a time crunch at this point, and the website has over 1,500 pages of content. Going through each title tag and assessing it's value will be a fairly time-consuming process unless there are tools that I'm unaware of.
Any suggestions?
Thanks!
-
Hi Cesar,
I would think that changing it all at once may have both positive and negative effects for you based on what your current status is as far as the SERPS go. Use MOZ on page grader https://moz.com/researchtools/on-page-grader to check to see how your pages rank for the keywords you are targeting on each page. You can also check your rankings by running a report in MOZ. Then you can see where you stand. Next try switching a few, getting re indexed, check your SERPS and run the reports again.
But you may want to have your vendor try something else.
I would caution against a breadcrumb structure because it may not really help you. I am not familiar with your site, but in general Title tags can be used for both SEO and to increase click-through. What I mean is that you need the TITLE to look good in the SERPS so that people will click on them and go to your site. The same goes for the META Description, it is not used for SEO but it can be a great way to increase click-through by presenting a very short description of what the user will find on the page if they click your link.
You may be better off researching what it is you want these pages to rank for and then creatively optimize for that in your titles, descriptions, and all other on page content.
Hope that helps!
Erick -
Updating them all at once isn't inherently bad, it's more about the quality of the updated ones that may see a negative impact.
When you say a breadcrumb structure, I immediately think of something like this: "Letterboxes - Steel - Small | Site Name" - is that what they're looking to move to? Handcrafted ones can be made far more compelling and often less spammy but it depends on the context of your site really and how many pages you're talking about.
Regardless of the number of pages, you should at least be writing them manually for the key landing pages - remember, the main reason for a page title is to attract that click from the right type of user in the SERPs.
If you'd like to share some examples of the proposed ones I can probably be much more helpful
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
-
How do you guys deal with product description and titles in PLA for different variation products?
Hello guys!
Paid Search Marketing | | Sorin_T
I have to say that I have been browsing, reading, learning and so on Moz for a long time now, and when I had a question to ask I was scared of askings so I don't look stupid but since I've asked my first question a few weeks ago and got a really helpful answer that helped me to no longer think like that. Therefore here is my question: What is the best way of writing product description and titles on Google PLA for product variation? Let's say you have a rope for example which come in different diameter and colour. Right... The title yes it should include variation such as Brand Size Model Colour Other Attributes on each individual product title but the question is .. does to description has to be different for each product so that you also include the attributes for the given product variation? I hope someone out there will understand my question and come up with a good answer. Thank you!0 -
Noob Question on franchise sites
What is the best way to approach these franchise sites that have tons of location pages with 95% same content on every page? Each location has its own unique url that just redirects to the main franchise location page, but with no uniqueness or independent blog is it even possible to get a page like this ranked locally or is the best route PPC?
Paid Search Marketing | | satoridesign0 -
Google Remarketing Tag
Is the code snippet for a Google Remarketing Tag specific to one domain, or will it collect the audience list for any webpage(s) of any domain? Best,
Paid Search Marketing | | ChristopherGlaeser
Christopher0 -
targeting different keywords for site
A site i am working on seakayakingdevon.co.uk, currently optimising for sea kayaking wishes to target alternative keywords such as - canoeing, canoe trips etc. more importantly rank higher than a dedicated local canoeing center site. The issue is he provides kayaking trips and courses and not canoeing but believes a a large percent of his targeted market actual mistakenly searches for canoeing when they actually mean kayaking or simply have no preference - i.e kayaks are often confused with canoes especially with people who have no preference but are more inclined to search using terms related to canoeing, canoe day trip etc. As his site is geared to what he actually provides, I have advised that he would struggle to target such terms as he has no content relating to canoeing and risks the overall ranking positions and SEO efforts for sea kayaking terms.( As these would have to be diluted and would no longer relate to the actual page content.) What method could he deploy without sacrificing the sea kayaking optimisation? I realise he could optimise the site and content for both but question just how successful this would be when compared with the loss of dedicated sea kayaking audience. Is it really worth targeting keywords for service he doesn't provide? On a separate note the site is doing reasonably well since optmisation for localised serch terms but would like to target a wider UK audience as well i.e. tourism to the area. thanks
Paid Search Marketing | | Bristolweb0 -
Does anyone do SEO for a % of sales?
I am the CEO of a small company ( 33 employees in Jacksonville, FL ) We have a family of websites that sell office products - we are the manufacture we have a staff of 3 in the website dept - but with 10 active sites its alot of work. We are launching a new site this week and need to do some SEO for the site .. Since this new site has no sales - i want to see if there is someone that will work based on a % of sales - say 10% of sales for 18 months - Here are my thoughts : Option A: - go out and get a "package" for say $5000 and have SEO done and hope it proves results Option B: - partner with someone and give them 10% of sales the site produces - so if we can grow it to $1M in sales - that person could make $100K off the site - ( our competition is a $20M + site) Some would say that im crazy and it might cost me $100K -i like it because we are all on the same page and i pay for results - not promises. Thoughts?
Paid Search Marketing | | BryanCroft1 -
Your site is in organic results for adwords keyword - improved quality score?
Let's say I am targeting a keyword "Blue Widgets Cityname" with an AdWords campaign. My SEO landing page is coming up in position #6 in the organic results for this keyword. Because I have my website in the organic search results, does my quality score automatically improve? Conversely, my quality score could go up because the organic search results facilitate a higher CTR for both the ads and the organic results. However, I am wondering if there is a quality score algorithmic component that automatically makes my quality score go up simply because the same domain I am targeting is in the organic results.
Paid Search Marketing | | qlkasdjfw0 -
Your Google AdWords account has been permanently suspended for repeated violation of AdWords or Landing Page and Site policies in this or a related account.
My client nor I received any warning. We even had a google adwords team optimize the account and my rep does not yet know the reason for the ban. Not sure if its related but their google organic rankings dropped significantly at the same time. https://adwords.google.com/support/aw/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=164786 Any advice here? Do these Questions get indexed by google? I will ask my client if I can disclose the domain. Is there any way around a permanent ban? They were spending 50K per month. Is this enough to have any clout?
Paid Search Marketing | | webbroi0 -
Have you seen a correlation in between running a PPC campaing and increased SEO ranking for a new site (< 3 months old)?
I have read many conflicting articles on this topic. I understand that running a PPC campaign at a launch phase of a site can get a lot of insights such as exact traffic patterns etc. But the question is: is there a correlation or not with increased rankings position for new site as search engine are forced to crawled that given landing page to give your ad a score? Thanks in advance for your answers and opinion
Paid Search Marketing | | OlivierChateau0