If I want to update the title of a page on my website would that negatively impact SEO?
-
I want to update a few page titles on my website. Some are duplicate titles, and some titles are just too long. Will my website be negatively impacted at all if I update these?
I read somewhere that once you have created a page you need to stick to the title you have given it. So I am not sure if I should leave these pages be and make note of utilizing better SEO practices for the future or if I can go back and edit them.
Any insight is much appreciated!
-
I agree with Charles-Oliver, I would definitely document where these pages currently rank, and then assess after making your changes.
As long as you're not removing the keyword / key phrase you're ranking for from the title, or dramatically changing the intent, you probably don't have anything to worry about!
-
Hi Meredith
Updating and optimizing title pages and meta description is a big part of on-site SEO so do not worry about tweaking them a little bit.
As a general rule, If you have confidence that a title is truncated on the SERPs because of its character limit, or that it doesn't convey efficiently the topic you are addressing in your page, you really should change it. Of course, be mindful of putting your keywords without appearing too spammy.
If I were you, I would look up the keyword I'm trying to rank for, see what's ranking and write a title that expresses what the page is about while keeping the user intent in mind.
I'd suggest you extract your titles (moz or screaming frog) so that you can easily revert back if you see your ranking/sessions drop after changing them.
Hope this helps!
PS: Don't be afraid to try out things - that's how you'll know if certain changes can or won't impact results.
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
-
Planning to transition to a new website domain - should I press pause on SEO initiatives?
Hello - my company is planning to transition to a new website domain sometime this year, probably about six months from now. Our current website does not currently get much organic traffic from unbranded search terms. I would really like to fix that by publishing lots of new blog posts and trying to get more backlinks. But with the website transition on the horizon, I'm wondering if I should hold off on posting new pages and getting backlinks for the time being. Then once the new website is live, I can start to ramp things up. What would you do in this situation? Also, does anyone know of any thorough guides or walk-throughs that cover all of the best practices (re: SEO) when migrating to a new website domain?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | collinburkewg0 -
Archive pages structure using a unique hierarchical taxonomy, could be good for SEO?
Hi, Preamble:
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | danielecelsa
We are creating a website where people look for professionals for some home working. We want to create a homepage with a search bar where people write the profession/category (actually it is a custom taxonomy) that they need, like ‘plumbers’, and a dropdown/checkbox filter where they can choose the city where they need the plumber.
The result page is a list of plumber agencies in the city chosen. Each agency is a Custom Post Type for us. Furthermore, we are hardly working to make our SEO ranking as high as possible.
So, for example, we know that it is important to have a well-done Archive Page for each Taxonomy term, besides a well-done Results Page.
Also, we know it is bad for SEO to have duplicated pages or (maybe) similar pages, ranking for the same (or maybe also similar) keywords. Proposed Structure:
So, what we are thinking is to have this structure:
A unique hierarchical taxonomy that INCLUDES the City AND the profession! That means that our taxonomy ‘taxonomy_unique’ has terms like: ‘Rome’, ‘Paris’, ‘Dublin’ as father and also terms like ‘Plumbers’, ‘Gardeners’, ‘Electricians’ which are sons of some City father! So we will have the term 'Plumbers' son of 'Rome' and we will have also the term 'Plumbers' son of 'Paris'. Each of these two taxonomy terms (Rome/Plumbers and Paris/Plumbers) will have an archive page that we want to make ranking for the keywords ‘Plumbers in Rome’ and ‘Plumbers in Paris’ respectively. It is easier to think of it imagining the breadcrumbs. They will be:
Home > Rome > Plumbers
and
Home > Paris > Plumbers Both will have: a static content (important for SEO), where we describe the plumber profession with a focus on the city, like ‘Find the best Plumbers in Rome’ vs ‘Find the best Plumbers in Paris' a 'dynamic' content - below - that is a list of Custom Post Types which have that taxonomy term associated. Furthermore, also 'Rome' and 'Paris' are taxonomy terms that have their own archive page. In those pages, we are thinking to show the Custom Post Types (agencies) associated with that taxonomy term as a father OR maybe just a list of the 'sons' of that father, so links to those archive pages 'sons').
In both cases, there should be also a static content talking maybe about the city and the professionals it offers in general. Questions:
So what we would like to understand is: Is it bad from an SEO perspective to have 2 URLs that look like this:
www.mysite.com/Rome/Plumbers
and
www.mysite.com/Naples/Plumbers
where the static content is really similar and it is something like that:
“Are you looking for the best plumbers in the city of Rome”
and
“Are you looking for the best plumbers in the city of Naples”? Also, these kinds of pages will be much more than 2, one for each City.
We are doing that because we want the two different pages to rank high in two different cities, but we are not sure if Google likes that. On the other hand, each City will have one page for each kind of job, so:
www.mysite.com/Rome/Plumbers
www.mysite.com/Rome/Gardeners
www.mysite.com/Rome/Electricians
So the same question, does Google like this or not? About 'Rome' and 'Paris' archive pages, does Google prefer a list of Custom Post Types that have that father term associated as taxonomy, or a list of the archive pages 'sons', with links to those pages? What do you think about this approach? Do you think this structure could be good from an SEO perspective, or maybe there could be something better alternatively? Hoping everything is clear, we really appreciate anyone dedicating its time and leaving feedback.
Daniele0 -
Consolidating product pages during website migration
Hello, We are an e-commerce & content site undergoing a website migration and redesign in the coming months. We will be getting an entirely new website. Many of our URLs will be changing: Current URL setup: www.mysite.com/catalog/SKU12345/product-title-here
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | katelynroberts
Future URL setup: www.mysite.com/catalog/product-title-here So we're aware we will be using plenty of 301 redirects to achieve this. Further to this though, we currently have a product page for each configuration of a product - for example, a single-sided bookmark has its own page and URL, and the double-sided version of the same bookmark has its own page and URL. In our site redesign, we are hoping to consolidate each of these instances into one product page where users can select single or double-sided and the price will update accordingly. The bookmark URLs would then go from:
_www.mysite.com/catalog/SKU12345/bookmark-single-sided _(call this URL A for simplicity)www.mysite.com/catalog/SKU67890/bookmark-double-sided (call this URL B) To (after migrating to the new URL structure for the new site, and the now-consolidated single- & double-sided product pages):
www.mysite.com/catalog/bookmark (call this URL C) What is the best way to make this transition without losing too much of our SEO value? I understand there is nearly always traffic loss with URL changes but I'd like to at least minimize the damage as best I can. We have backlinks and ranks for many product pages so I want to make sure we pass as much of this as we can. (And is this at all further complicated by the fact that URL A & B won't exist on the new site, and URL C doesn't exist on the current site? Does this impact the use of the 301 redirects and if so, how?) Are we better off to approach this page consolidation after the site migration and treat it as a separate project? This is something that is important to our user experience, and is definitely a change we want to make. Any advice is appreciated - thank you! I'm a fairly beginner-intermediate SEO so this is all somewhat new but I want to be able to at least convey some understanding to our developer of what we need to do. I was able to find this discussion (https://moz.com/community/q/merging-pages-and-seo) which describes a similar situation and solutions if we were just consolidating the pages but doesn't quite have the complicating factor of the entire site migration happening at the same time. Thanks so much!0 -
How long should it take for indexed pages to update
Google has crawled and indexed my new site, but my old URLS appear in the search results. Is there a typical amount of time that it takes for Google to update the URL's displayed in search results?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | brianvest0 -
SEO tips for linking a website to ebay
Hi guys, I am helping a client link their website to Ebay and I am wondering if there is anything specific I should be doing in terms for search engine optimisation. Any advice would be really helpful. Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | StoryScout0 -
Website Migration and SEO
Recently I migrated three websites from www.product.com to www.brandname.com/product. Two of these site are performing as normal when it comes to SEO but one of them lost half of its traffic and dropped in rankings significantly. All pages have been properly redirected, onsite SEO is intact and optimized, and all pages are indexed by Search engines. Has anyone had experience with this type of migration that could give some input on what a possible solution could be? Any help would be greatly appreciated!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | AlexVelazquez0 -
Website design agency - Penguin update could effect us?
Hi Guys, Just wanted to pick your brains here - I have a client who I have just taken on who is a small website design agency, all their clients they have built websites for over the years have the anchor text; 'website design' Will the website be effected by the new Penguin update due to the face they have thousands of links on clients websites they have built all witht he same anchor text? One idea I thought about is to build links into different pages of the website on future client websites? Any help or guidance would be much appreciated ! thank you Thanks Gareth
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | GAZ090 -
Too early? Rebuilt website from .asp to .php... Internal pages not ranking at all!
Am I jumping the gun on expecting results? I recently switched our ecommerce website from .asp to .php (new site went up May 15th) but we did not switch domain names. we seems to be doing better until a few days ago when traffic took a steep drop... (not like we were getting that much in the first place either) I was wondering if I'm doing something completely wrong or do i need to wait longer? Are big swings normal when relaunching a website? am I just being too anxious? The internal pages are getting no juice and I dont know why... I know i need to build on the links to the site? but am I doing something else completely wrong to see the orgranic search results drop down to almost nothing? I'm really new to SEO and would love if i could get another opinion on http://www.moondoggieinc.com. Thanks! Kristy
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | KristyO0