Downsides on shortening article title?
-
Hi there,
I'm new to Moz: great tool so far!
I just tried the page optimization feature and see that (for instance for this article) page titles are often too long. Now it's tempting to just shorten the title straight away, but I have a memory of someone once telling me changing the title will change the URL. And changing the URL is something not appreciated by Google.
Could someone please explain if and why this is/isn't the case? And if there are any downsides/things to consider before changing the article's title?
Thank you in advance!
-
Though there are no real downsides to shortening the title, as long as it accurately describes the products or services that be sold on that page. Your web designer, should therefore add a page title which really accurately describes what you are selling on that page
-
@Christy-Correll Best Answer about your query.
-
There and no real downsides to shortening the title of an article, as long as the title of page / blog post accurately explains what the page or blog post is about.
We done this for a fencing business because some of the titles were to long for the meta title and description, so we had to rewrite them to make them shorter.
-
There are no real downsides to shortening the title of an article.
That’s as long as the page title accurately explains what the page or blog post is about.
We done this for a Cardiff fencing business, simply because some of the meta titles were too long for the meta title and description.
-
Thank you for your replies José, Christy and Salience,
It looks like you are right, and the ('SEF URL') is fixed: it will not change when I change the title: https://screencast.com/t/XR6lS6YdL
For now -changing URLs- sounds a bit too risky for me to start with yet. I'm just trying to create the best articles, contentwise.
Feels a bit odd that URLs are going to be different from the titles though. But I guess that's a better situation than having titles that are too long.
-
Hey,
Agree with the other replies but wanted to mention that changing your article title may have an adverse affect on the ranking performance of your content, so be careful and do some solid research before making a change.
Thanks!
Salience
-
Hi RaoulWB,
Welcome to the Q&A forum! As far as the search engines are concerned, the title and URL of a page are independent. However, some content management systems create the URL based on the page title, and may automatically update and redirect the URL if you update a title (depending on how the CMS is configured, etc.). Is this possibly what you are thinking of?
Christy
-
Hello,
It is independent, you can change your title and not change the url. Many times to improve the CTR the SEO title is changed. Changing the url is more delicate, first you must study the risks it has for the positioning of that url. If you have received links to that url you could lose them, etc.Regards
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
-
Best Title Im working on
Im working on the best title Design based for the products, Pls suggest This is my title for product page I suggested ACDelco 40-count Super Alkaline AA Batteries: Buy ACDelco 40-count Super Alkaline AA Batteries online at Best Prices: Domain.com and in the page im using ACDelco 40-count Super Alkaline AA Batteries Definitely title crossing more than 60 characters, I have seen many ecommerce site, they never bothered about title character lenght.. Im confused!!! and Is there any best way of title design to include Buy, Online, best price are the frequent keywords with product name. Pls suggest
On-Page Optimization | | Rahim1190 -
Can I add multi location business cities to homepage meta title or desc.?
I have a business with 6 locations (in the same state) but very different cities. We we expanded from one location with the city name in the URL we followed best practices to move to the new domain without the singular city name in the URL. We definitly took a hit on the organic side and I'm trying to figure out best practice for where to add geo info. Currently I have geo info: -In footer
On-Page Optimization | | beehiive
-Contact Page -On local page It's a WP site and each location has it's own page (ie. locations/geolocation_keyword). I know all other locations will take sometime but my concern is the hit we took on the original location that had geo-target URL. I guess really my question is simply can I include city names in homepage meta title and desc.?
and is there anything else I can do to bounce back organically on the original city faster?0 -
Eshop - Prevent Duplicate Product Titles... A Strategy
Hi Mozzers ! I'm running a small online vintage bag and jewellery store (www.vintageheirloom.com). Items are unique and need to be written up individually. Whilst the details condition, age etc are unique many of the items name's aren't. For instance, we have over a year had several bags that we've named: Vintage Celine classic box bag Naturally Moz has pulled up these as duplicates, same product title. I could append a unique database id number at the end of each title but it looks strange for the customer. I could add a few details like condition, age & price e.g. Vintage Celine classic box bag - B+ 80s 90s £425 but I don't think this would be entirely unique either. Has anyone a good strategy for creating unique product titles that looks ok and informative to the customer? Thanks for looking. Kevin abut some items do have the same Does anyone have a strat
On-Page Optimization | | well-its-1-louder0 -
How To Change Wordpress Category Title
My categories are indexed and I want to change the category page title. At present it just defaults to the category name but I want to set a different page title. For example I want the category to be 'Motor Cars' but I want the category page title to be 'Buy Motor Cars - New And Used'. How can I do this?
On-Page Optimization | | SamCUK0 -
Do a lot of related articles in lower subfolders, boost higher level subfolder keywords?
For instance www.example1.com/cooltopic/ has 5 ‘verycool articles’ under /cooltopic/ www.example1.com/cooltopic/verycool-article1/ , www.example1.com/cooltopic/verycool-article2/. On www.example2.com/cooltopic/ there are 100 ‘verycool articles’ Who will rank above the other for the term ‘cooltopic’ in the SERPS? Is it www.example1.com with 5 ‘verycool articles’ or www.example2.com with 100 ‘verycool articles’. Or does the quantity of (theme related) articles in subfolders not matter? And what if example1.com has more quality external links from the ‘awesome community’. Would this change a lot in the rankings? Or what if both domains have 0 external links, but example2.com has 95 more internal links (from the articles) to /cooltopic/ than example1.com with only 5 articles.
On-Page Optimization | | PrizeWize0 -
Page Title - What is better?
Hi SEO Heads, I have another question if someone would be so kind in answering What page title of the 2 below is better for SEO (i) Chocolate Cake|Chocolate Cake Recipe|Xmas Cake or (ii) Chocolate Cake | Chocolate Cake Recipe | Xmas Cake As you can see (ii) Page Title has a space before and after the | (vertical bar) I know the second page title looks better to human eyes but on some pages I had to forego the space so i could fit my keywords in the page title. is this a good idea? Can anyone help me? Cheers Aidan
On-Page Optimization | | aidanlawlor0 -
Duplicate Page Titles?
I'm running a campaign report within SEOmoz & am getting 9 pages that appear on this report. They all happen to be our author pages www.example.com//author/admin We have multiple authors. Is there a proper way that I should take care of this? Also as a side note, I'm using Yoast Wordpress SEO plugin, is there a setting on their I should change that will fix this issue? Or is it an issue at all? Thanks, BJ
On-Page Optimization | | seointern0