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.
Looking for opinions on structuring meta title tags/page title/menu title/H1
-
Hi everyone I am hoping a few of you can share your opinions. I have been having conversations (okay, healthy debates) about how to write/structure meta title tag and how to compliment them with the H1, page title, menu name. To help explain the thought processes I will use a pretend keyword. How about "screwdriver".
Case: (I made this up) we are redesigning a website for a construction tools manufacturing company (pretend name: ABC Tools) targeting OEMs who are interested in purchasing large quantities of tools. The product categories (to become main menu items) are Screwdrivers, Nails, Drills, and Hammers. (bear with me .... this is just an example I am making up on the fly)
K. Circling back to screwdrivers - let's say we have one landing page (a primary category page and in the main menu) listing products and great details about screwdrivers. Focus keywords are screwdriver manufacturer, screwdriver supplier, construction screwdrivers
Below are questions being debated. If you are willing ... how would you address these questions? And, can you explain WHY?
QUESTION ONE: How would you structure the meta title tag (feel free to write one of your own)
- Screwdriver Manufacturer - Construction Screwdriver | ABC Tools
- ABC Tools - US-based Screwdriver Manufacturer Supplier Near You
- High-Quality Screwdrivers for Construction with ABC Tools
QUESTION TWO:
- how would you write the H1 on the page? Would it match the meta tag? OR, would you write something different using the primary keyword?
QUESTION THREE
- Remembering this is not a blog post ... it is a primary landing page linked to the main navigation. What would the menu title be? (remember the product categories above are how the main menu items are bucketed)
- Screwdrivers
- Screwdriver Manufacturer
Typically in WordPress, the H1 and the menu title is auto-populated using the page title (not the title tag)... So, if we use Screwdrivers as the page title but we want the H1 to match the meta title tag, would we manually change the H1? Or, have the page title and title tag match, but manually change the menu item?
-
Hi
Never going to disagree with Rand. The first analysis is the actual SERP you want to rank on. So audit the SERP. What are the Title tags that are ranking? What is the content that is working? So start there on your Title tag. That should make it an easy decision.
WordPress only auto populates if you want, can set as per your requirements.
Confused on menu title.. is that the navigation?
-
Thank you for the response! In an attempt to better explain my question I believe I overcomplicated it ...
Your response is helpful, but also triggered more questions in addition to the ones I had.
Here are questions I am still working on addressing:
-
Your title tag example struck another question for me. Currently, we use the same structure which would be summarized by "Keyword | keyword version 2 | Brand/Company Name". Based on my understanding of Rand's recent Whiteboard Friday: https://moz.com/blog/one-hour-guide-to-seo-keyword-targeting-on-page-optimization this would not be considered best practice anymore. Rather, your title would be written to say Fast Car Insurance Quotes online with Example... It's not just keywords and brand, it's compelling, etc. Here is another supporting article: https://moz.com/blog/title-tag-hacks-whiteboard-friday Thoughts on that?
-
Based on almost all guides findable and the fact that WordPress auto-populates the H1 with the page title, does the page title need (or should) to match the meta title tag?
-
Does the menu name need to match the page title? In your case - the menu name itself (assuming in the main menu) does it need to include the longtail version. In other words - how much impact does the menu title itself have on SEO? If any? And does it need to match the page title/H1?
-
-
Hi
I am an unclear but will frame from car insurance and hope it assists. As am not sure on which customer queries to target in your scenario - dangerous to make a suggestion without a better understanding of your business model and products highest ROI. The customer queries should be data driven, ie volume. If that is the goal. We use semrush. moz and keyword planner and a few tools.
Lets say chasing car insurance, this got a client to No 1. This is a general answer..
The url we recommend be
www.example.com/car-insurance/
The Title tag we would recommend be Car Insurance | Compare Car Insurance Quotes | Example
If not a comparison site - Car Insurance | Car Insurance Quotes | Example
Now for the H1.
It should be different from the URL and Title but contextual..
So lets say Car Insurance Quote or Car Insurance Australia
The meta description should on our view the targeted keyword once and be about clickability.. not sure if that gets you there, but hope it helps.
Go get em.
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
-
Translating meta tags using WPML and AIO SEO
Having a heck of a time finding info on this one... We're working on a multilingual website which uses WPML. I've used the All in One SEO plugin to customize meta data (title, description, etc). These strings do not appear in the list of translations in WPML. Does anyone have any experience with this setup? How do you enable WPML to translate meta data set via the AIO plugin? Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | Jul 24, 2018, 7:25 AM | jonmc0 -
Htaccess - Redirecting TAG or Category pages
Hello Fellow Moz's, We have an issue redirecting some /TAG and /Category pages to inner pages. As an example we use: RedirectMatch 301 /category/Sample-Category(.*) https://OurDomain.com.au/New-Page//$1 That works well. The issue is we have other categories and tags that are named similar to /Sample-Category As an example, if we try to redirect /Sample-Category-1 to /New-Page-1 - it will not work, and redirects to /New-Page I assume this is because /Sample-Category is already being redirected, so anything after /Sample-Category like -1 or -2 or -3 etc, will not be recognized. Anyone know of a workaround?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | Dec 31, 2017, 10:30 PM | Jes-Extender-Australia0 -
Bad SEO Practice: in title tag?
Greetings, I just discovered that some of our content was produced with
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | Mar 22, 2016, 11:23 PM | Eric_Lifescript
tags in the title tag. Example: <title>Diabetes Symptoms <br> In Women Over 40</title> My gut says this is bad for SEO, but I couldn't find a definitive answer on the web, so I thought I would ask the community of gurus here at Moz. 🙂 Thanks in advance for any reply. Kind regards, Eric0 -
Is a 404, then a meta refresh 301 to the home page OK for SEO?
Hi Mozzers I have a client that had a lot of soft 404s that we wanted to tidy up. Basically everything was going to the homepage. I recommended they implement proper 404s with a custom 404 page, and 301 any that really should be redirected to another page. What they have actually done is implemented a 404 (without the custom 404 page) and then after a short delay 301 redirected to the homepage. I understand why they want to do this as they don't want to lose the traffic, but is this a problem with SEO and the index? Or will Google treat as a hard 404 anyway? Many thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | Sep 10, 2014, 12:37 PM | Chammy0 -
Is a different location in page title, h1 title, and meta description enough to avoid Duplicate Content concern?
I have a dynamic website which will have location-based internal pages that will have a <title>and <h1> title, and meta description tag that will include the subregion of a city. Each page also will have an 'info' section describing the generic product/service offered which will also include the name of the subregion. The 'specific product/service content will be dynamic but in some cases will be almost identical--ie subregion A may sometimes have the same specific content result as subregion B. Will the difference of just the location put in each of the above tags be enough for me to avoid a Duplicate Content concern?</p></title>
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | Mar 31, 2014, 6:07 PM | couponguy0 -
Should you include domain / brand in Meta Title
Hello, I am trying to come up with a strategy for creating meta title information for my eCommerce store. I have read mixed reviews on the examples below. The first includes the company / brand in the meta title and thus is included in SE results. The second does not. Probably not a 'right' answer here so I look forward to answers with rationale... also open to a completely difference strategy all together! 1MR Vortex by BPI Sports - $Company_Name OR 1MR Vortex by BPI Sports - Pre Workout Supplement Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | Mar 19, 2014, 3:31 AM | 6thirty0 -
How to Disallow Tag Pages With Robot.txt
Hi i have a site which i'm dealing with that has tag pages for instant - http://www.domain.com/news/?tag=choice How can i exclude these tag pages (about 20+ being crawled and indexed by the search engines with robot.txt Also sometimes they're created dynamically so i want something which automatically excludes tage pages from being crawled and indexed. Any suggestions? Cheers, Mark
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | Nov 1, 2012, 11:24 PM | monster990 -
Does rel=canonical fix duplicate page titles?
I implemented rel=canonical on our pages which helped a lot, but my latest Moz crawl is still showing lots of duplicate page titles (2,000+). There are other ways to get to this page (depending on what feature you clicked, it will have a different URL) but will have the same page title. Does having rel=canonical in place fix the duplicate page title problem, or do I need to change something else? I was under the impression that the canonical tag would address this by telling the crawler which URL was the URL and the crawler would only use that one for the page title.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | Feb 11, 2014, 10:45 AM | askotzko0