Complicated Title Tag Issues. Experts, Please Help!
-
Hey there Moz community! This is the first time I ask a question here so please forgive me if I miss any forum etiquette.
I am managing SEO for an educational site which is built in React Js, and so far much of the job has been keyword research and site optimization. The site still has slow PageSpeed though.
The Issues - 4 weeks ago we published 20 or so content pieces, I had pre-prepared title tags and meta descriptions. But when we released the content there was a programming error that made all of the pages show another title tag for all 20 pages instead of the pre-prepared individual title tags.
I noticed this after 3 days and the issue was fixed within 6 days, but by then Google had crawled and indexed the pages. And now I can't get Google to change to the pre-prepared tags no matter what I do! I've tried changing the content, changing the URL of one of the pages, and I've sent Google spiders to re-crawl the pages multiple times.
The super weird thing is that the correct title tag shows in the 'navigation bar/tabs bar' on google chrome:
But NOT when I view the source code for the page:
Yesterday I was taking a walk in the park and I just couldn't stop thinking about it (it is really starting to get to me by now since nothing works), so I ran back home and looked closely at one of these pages in the Google search console. And I noticed something I hadn't seen before… BOTH of the title tags can be found in the HTML:
Pre-prepared title tag: <title></strong>UK Seat Belt & Car Seat Laws: The Definitive Guide<strong></title>
The other title tag (in src section): title=Ace%20The%20DMV%20Permit%20Test%20%26%20Get%20Your%20License
Could this be the problem or what do you think? I've understood that Google has automated title tags and that they can choose their own if they think it fits better, but the title tags aren't even close to describing the topic as it is now so it doesn’t make any sense.
All answers are greatly appreciated! Your advice is life-saving for a learner like me.
P.S. I love SEO but it can be very frustrating sometimes!
Thank you very much,
Leo
-
UPDATE: It worked!!!!!! I'm so freaking happy! Love you guys!
-
This could definitely be relevant to us as the pagespeed is slow when first entering the site (like 6-7 seconds...) and a lot of resources are loaded (primarily unnecesary JavaScript and render-blocking resources according to Lighthouse). We're working on the pagespeed but I'll pass on this info to the development team in the meantime. If the Ross fix doesn't work we'll put the tags as high up as possible in the .
Thanks a lot, seoelevated! You are an absolute champion!
P.S. We're also changing to nextJS which, as I've understood, should solve a lot of JavaScript SEO issues.
-
Primarily, the requirement is to be in the section. However, I have seen cases where a long-load-time resource in the above meta tags can cause meta tags to be ignored. These were fairly extreme cases, where the resource took multiple seconds to load, synchronously. But moving the meta tags (and Title) above those resources fixed the issue. Also, in another case, we had a snippet from a CDN provider which included an iframe, and in that iframe there was a section and a closing . It turned out that Google was ignoring all of our tags after the which was injected in that iframe, even though it was only supposedly closing the section opened within the iframe. Once we moved that iframe to the end of our own section, below all our meta data, the issues resolved. So, with all that, I do recommend putting meta data at the top of the section, but depending on what else is in there, it might not be an issue for you.
-
Hi Leowa,
As long as it comes before you're fine.
-
Hi Seoelevated, thanks! It is in the section, but below google analytics and google tag manager scripts. Is that good enough? Although as it is right now the wrong title tag shows in the page source but we're implementing fixes according to the feedback from Ross (which will hopefully help!!)
-
I also suggest to double check that the actual title tag (the first one you included in your post) is in the section of the page, and not the . And preferably high up in the section before any scripts or other elements which could take significant time to load. Check this in "view page source" and not just using the "inspect" function of the browser's dev tools, to ensure that some scripts on the page aren't altering the title tag after the document is loaded, since the search engines may instead use whatever is initially set in the actual of the document before scripts execute.
-
Sounds good!
-
Hi Ross!
Thank you so much for your answer! I will try this immediately and let you know how it goes
Leo
-
Hi there,
I had a similar problem at one of the client's websites. You must remove the second title from the page because Google is confused about which title is correct. It is possible that the first titles are dynamically generated by the script and they are being overwritten by the second titles or vice versa. By the way, this "%20" means space in a programming language.
Ross
-
Hi, I noticed that the images I added don't show. So to clarify:
The 'navigation bar' on google = the tabs-bar on the top of chrome
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
-
Crawl diagnostic issue?
I'am sorry if my English isn't very good, but this is my problem at the moment: On two of my campagnes I get a weird error on Moz Analytics: 605 Page Banned by robots.txt, X-Robots-Tag HTTP Header, or Meta Robots Tag Moz Analytics points to an url that starts with: http:/**/None/**www.????.com. We don't understand how Moz indexed this non-existing page that starts with None? And how can we solve this error? I hope that someone can help me.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | nettt0 -
Weird title tag in SERps (see attachment)
Hi Mozzers Does anyone know why my clients title tag appears like it does in the image attached? It seems as though Google is pulling the parent page url and putting that at the front. All other title tags are normal. Anyone any ideas and is it anything to be worried about? Thanks Anthony @Anthony_Mac85 9KhTgk5
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Tone_Agency0 -
What would you consider an over optimized title tag? [examples included]
Say you want to target a single page for 2 terms and they both get a good amount of search volume. At the same time you don't want the title tag to be atrocious, do you just choose one? (maybe the one with most search volume). I'm going to make up some examples which aren't based on real search volume for the sake of time and completely fake and you be the judge: custom car parts - exact sv: 4000
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Hyrule
personalized car parts - exact sv: 5000
wholesale custom car parts - exact sv: 4400 Title tag A: Custom Car Parts - Personalized Wholesale Car Parts | Company Name OR Title Tag B: Custom Car Parts | Company Name Or You recommend. Do you get where i am going here? Some of the pages on my website target 3-4 terms that mean exactly or pretty close to the same thing.0 -
DMOZ help
So yesterday I got a DMOZ editor account. I would like to know if Google indexes the editor profile pages on DMOZ: http://www.dmoz.org/public/profile?editor= here are some examples http://www.dmoz.org/public/profile?editor=thehelper http://www.dmoz.org/public/profile?editor=raph3988 http://www.dmoz.org/public/profile?editor=skasselea I would like to know if it is worth while to build up this page so it will pass link juice. And can anyone tell me how frequently Google crawls for new editors (if that's possible?)
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | raph39880 -
Is a separate title tags and description reqquired
is it a separate title tags and description for all pagination pages. We have common title tag and meta desciption of all pagination pages should we need to modify the same
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Modi0 -
Help choosing titles
Good evening guys, I changed my titles last month, in preparation for the over optimisation penalty and the result was an instant and quite dramatic loss in traffic. I believe the reason is, the change resulted in a lot of duplicate titles. My website is similar to deviant art, but for mobile phones. So the titles include the brand of mobile phone for example. The titles were: Upload name + Brand + Content type - 3 tags - FILEID So an example would be Black Nokia wallpaper - black, abstract, grey - 12345 I changed them to Black Nokia wallpaper by artist name on domain name. But this resulted in thousands of duplicate titles and a dramatic loss in traffic. For example a user could upload 20 black wallpapers. With this in mind, I need to change my titles and fast. But I don't want to make another mistake. The one I am quite keen to try is: Black Nokia Wallpaper - Tag1, tag2 wallpapers - on domain name. So the main variable would be the name of the upload and then the 2 tags, to mix things up a little. Another option would be to throw the file ID in there somewhere? As that will always be unique. Perhaps the file ID could be in the place of the "wallpapers" after the two tags? I'd like to keep the domain name, for branding reasons. Any other suggestions are warmly welcomed. Thanks a lot.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | seo-wanna-bs0 -
Duplication Issue?
One of our copywriters has just written a blog to be posted on our own company blog to be reviewed by myself, however I had noticed that the blog post has some duplication issues with one of our own product pages, about 60% duplication, is it still worth posting? Will search engines still index the blog post? Kind Regards,
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Paul780 -
Title tag showing in Google that we are not setting
Hello, We've noticed that when we do a specific search (print screen attached), that the business name and/or a completely different title is getting indexed into the search engine that we are not setting. Below is an example from the source code of how we're setting the title, this matches the 2nd listing circled in the attached image. The indexed title tag reflects "Animal Business Card Holders - Kyle Design" Any ideas or feedback on how this is happening? <title>Animal Business Card Cases in Pet, Insect and Wildlife Designstitle> <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=UTF-8" /> <meta name="description" content="Eye-catching business card holder cases personalized with custom animal designs for humane professionals and pet owners. Custom select a sleek metal finish, bold aluminum or iridescent accent color, size and unique design for the ultimate self-expressing animal gift!" /> <meta name="keywords" content="business card holder unique personalized custom holders silver gold wood metal cards cases sleek aluminum engraved contemporary case animal animals design designs black color accents iridescent pet insect wildlife cat dog dragonfly butterfly lions sea turtles sea otters elephants animal lover animal activist zoologist veterinarian breeder animal whisperer thin deep large credit Asian size engraving personalize gift gifts special monogram customized corporate logo name professional title meaningful sentiment" /> <meta name="copyright" content="Copyright Kyle Design" /> <meta name="author" content="Kyle Design" />
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | marketing_zoovy.com
<meta name="generator" content="xyz Commerce System http://www.domain.com/" />
<link rel="canonical" href="xyz link"
<script type="text/javaScript"> Thanks,
Jamie0