Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
Q&A Page Titles
-
Hello All!
I am currently updating page titles and metadata descriptions for a websites Q&A section and have run in to a problem while updating page titles. Since it is the Q&A section of the website, all of the page titles are around 100 characters and some are up to 200 characters long. Here is an example:
Page Title: My child is working below grade level in math. Do I have to purchase the curriculum from the grade below as well?
The problem is that this is obviously too long for a SERP to display however I know it is best practice to have matching titles on both the title tag and page title. My question is what hurts SEO value more: the title tag and title of the page not matching or having a very long title displayed on the SERP?
-
I recommend you keep the title long as is and let google cut it based on the keywords searched. Editing those titles to a certain length and keep them making sense isn't scalable.
- long title tag = text gets cut off in serps, not worse for SEO but worse for CTR
- page heading and page title not matching won't hurt your SEO.
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
-
Site name in page title - leave it or remove it?
Hi all, Recently came across some authority blog (quicksprout to be precise) which stated that apart from main page, contact page, about us and some other generic pages, site name should be removed as it might produce duplicate content. example "How to blog | Example Site name" This mostly is the issue with tags and categories pages as it shows on Moz issues. Is that really a problem and site name should be taken off them? Thank you.
On-Page Optimization | | Optimal_Strategies1 -
Do You Add City Name & Key Word For Every Page?
Hello, I'm new to SEO but feel I have a decent grasp on it. However, I had a question pertaining to key words and using my city name in it. For instance, if I am using the key word "herniated disc treatment" do I need to put in my city name behind it or does google recognize that I am already in my city area because of my geo tagging and having it listed on the footer of my site? Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks! -Scott
On-Page Optimization | | slgray0 -
Include Site Name in Page Titles or not
i would like to ask if it is a good practice or not to Include Site Name in Page Titles. My page is not selling products it is about plagiarism checker tool. i will give one example in one page we are writing about the plagiarism types so the page title is plagiarism types and then is the site name. what is the better practice? Keep it or not? thanks in advance
On-Page Optimization | | anavasis3 -
Use of '&' in meta title
Hi, I know that use of '&' would be helpful to save space and also add more keyword variation to the title tag. But just want to make sure if it matters if I use '&' in most of my title tags? And also is it common to use more than & in one title? Would the following title be different in Google's perspective regardless of the title length? I am thinking they are all targeting the keywords 'fruit cake' and 'fruit bread', but the first one is the best. buy fruit cake & bread buy fruit cake & fruit bread buy fruit cake and fruit bread Thanks in advance.
On-Page Optimization | | russellbrown0 -
Page rank check
Hello everyone, How long should I wait to see if page rank for optimized pages have improved? cheers
On-Page Optimization | | PremioOscar0 -
Title and Heading Tags
Firstly I would like to comment on how helpful this site is. I haven't posted much before but have been reading tonnes of answers for many months now and have been finding it really useful. I used the SEOmoz scanner and the main problem highlighted was duplicate content so I started to add 'customer product reviews' I had received and unique 'further information' to each page (hopefully this was the right thing to do to solve duplicate content! : ) ) Then I looked at heading and title tags. Currently I set title tags for each product page to be "Brand Name- Product Name" but after doing some research we are thinking of putting Keyword Description of Product | Product Name | Brand Name (around 60 characters long). So is this the advised thing to do and create unique titles that are relevant to each specific product page for over 200 pages we have? In addition, any advice on setting optimum tags would be great. We keep reading varying tips online. I gather ideally h1 needs to be a shorter keyword rich version of the title tag? Many Thanks
On-Page Optimization | | jannkuzel0 -
Should I include a "|" for better page title SEO results?
I have seen many sites that include the "|" in page titles and was wondering if there is some SEO value in the practice. Example: Product Name | Company Name Instead of: Product Name by Company Name I have not seen any value in it myself other than a good way to avoid stop words. I wanted to make sure. Currently I have the "by" included in the page titles.
On-Page Optimization | | JedHenning0 -
Would it be bad to change the canonical URL to the most recent page that has duplicate content, or should we just 301 redirect to the new page?
Is it bad to change the canonical URL in the tag, meaning does it lose it's stats? If we add a new page that may have duplicate content, but we want that page to be indexed over the older pages, should we just change the canonical page or redirect from the original canonical page? Thanks so much! -Amy
On-Page Optimization | | MeghanPrudencio0