Product Title Formating Question
-
The majority of the products I sell require lengthy product titles, I have 600+ items that have titles over 70+ characters. In the interest of reducing the character count (Product Feeds) I'm trying to eliminate unnecessary "stop words" in the titles, such as "and", "with" etc..
I've listed an example of a current product listing below, followed by two different formats to reduce the character count. Which one if any is better for SEO or should I leave my titles alone and stick with my original format?
Current Listing Example:
- DeWalt Dual Comfort Safety Glasses with Black Frame and Clear Anti-Fog Lens
Suggested Listing Example:
- DeWalt Dual Comfort Safety Glasses-Black Frame-Clear Anti-Fog Lens
- DeWalt Dual Comfort Safety Glasses/Black Frame/Clear Anti-Fog Lens
-
Hi James,
I agree 100% with your statement. I wanted to get the SEOmoz communities opinion on my product title changes to see if my ideas are worth implementing.
-
Don't miss the obvious - title is a conversion tool not just for SEO. This is what makes your customers click on your page in SERPs and on your category pages. You should consider making the titles (and meta descriptions) better at "selling the click" not just from a keyword SEO point-of-view..
-
Hi Mike,
Thanks for your quick response.
My product titles are formated by Brand-Style Name-Product Type-Product Feature. It's much easier for a human to read and seems to work well for long-tail searches. These products are also nested in a keyword optimized section page.
I appreciate your advice, but I want to keep the names easier for humans to read.
-
HiMEldridge,
Stopwords can be removed from the title but it's always necessary. For the case you gave, I would dig into search volume of product base name, or brand name, with your additional features : black frame and anti-fog lens.
You get a more clean title with the focus on the main article (DeWalt Dual Comfort Safety Glasses) and you can put the additional properties in the page, close to the page title. You may also use your lengthy title on the H1/H2 of the site and use the smaller one for the head title, giving your page more variations on the product name.
Of course if the search volume for product + property exists, I would only remove the stop words.
-
I agree that 'with' and 'and' are unnecessary.I would delete the '-' and '/' and just use a string of words:
DeWalt Dual Comfort Safety Glasses Black Frame Clear Anti Fog Lens
From an SEO point of view you need to ask yourself what phrases users who are looking for that product would search for. The category (safety glasses)? the brand (DeWalt)? I doubt they would search for marketing words like "Dual Comfort" or things that seem secondary "clear".
I would play with the Google Keyword tool and see if there are any surprising matches. Actually, I just did and found that "safety glasses" is by far the most common term from the above set. I would be tempted to put the category first, followed by the brand, and then maybe some secondary words.
Safety Glasses DeWalt Black Frame Clear Anti Fog Lens
-
I've recently done this with our products. A few things to keep in mind:
-"The advantage to keeping within that limit is just the fact that the user can read the entire thing"
-The most important keywords should be first.
-I don't think that slashes or dashes are necessary.
-Keywords should have some sort of search volume that drives relevant traffic to your pages.
That's all I've got for now.
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
-
IMG TITLE no longer used in Wordpress?
Err, when did this happen? Although you can still enter a Title in the WP image library, when inserting into a post the Title tag is not implemented. Alt text is there OK but not Title. There was a plugin around that restored this basic seo functionality but it's no longer available. I mean - honestly!
On-Page Optimization | | robandsarahgillespie0 -
Showing more Duplicate Title Tags Than WMT
This is yet another question between moz vs google WebMaster Tools. In WMT it only shows 5 pages with a total of 18 duplicate titles. But moz is showing 298. It appears the duplicates are canonical links for the most part. What is the discrepancy?
On-Page Optimization | | jamavan0 -
Duplicate page titles and Content in Woocommerce
Hi Guys, I'm new to Moz and really liking it so far!
On-Page Optimization | | jeeyer
I run a eCommerce site on Wordpress + WooCommerce and ofcourse use Yoast for SEO optimalisation I've got a question about my first Crawl report which showed over 600 issues! 😐 I've read that this is something that happens more often (http://moz.com/blog/setup-wordpress-for-seo-success). Most of them are categorized under:
1. Duplicate Page Titles or;
2. Duplicate Page Content. Duplicate Page Titles:
These are almost only: product category pages and product tags. Is this problem beeing solved by giving them the right SEO SERP? I see that a lot of categories don't have a proper SEO SERP set up in yoast! Do I need to add this to clear this issue, or do I need to change the actual Title? And how about the Product tags? Another point (bit more off-topic) I've read here: http://moz.com/community/q/yoast-seo-plugin-to-index-or-not-to-index-categories that it's advised to noindex/follow Categories and Tags but isn't that a wierd idea to do for a eCommerce site?! Duplicate Page Content:
Same goes here almost only Product Categories and product tags that are displayed as duplicate Page content! When I check the results I can click on a blue button for example "+ 17 duplicates" and that shows me (in this case 17 URLS) but they are not related to the fist in any way so not sure where to start here? Thanks for taking the time to help out!
Joost0 -
Changing Title Tags once Indexed and positioned?
Hello, Would it be wise to change title tags on a page that is optimized and ranked already in google? These are sports pages, and the teams we are targeting are now in the playoffs so we wanted to insert that into our Title? Thanks!!
On-Page Optimization | | TP_Marketing0 -
Different Title and Meta Title Tag
Do the search engines rank based on the meta title tag or the title tag? What if you have a different meta title tag from the title tag? Edited: I have edited to clarify my issue. Having a different meta title tag from the title tag. Thank you for those who have answered the question so far.
On-Page Optimization | | rching0 -
Rel canonical tag question
Im trying to to fix my duplicate content problem with my catagory pages in my shopping cart. I have read about adding a rel canonical tag to the page so it links back to the main catagory page. So if I add a rel canonical tag to the main catagory page it will show up on every other page for that catagory like page 1 page 2 and so on and it will have the tag linking back to the main cat. That should fix it it right? Now that being said I cant seem to add the tag invetween the head tags. I can add it to the body where I can add content. Will the rel canonical tag work outside the head tags? Any other ideas on this fix? I contacted my people that host the cart to see if they have any features to help this will see what they say.
On-Page Optimization | | Dataken0 -
Optimise duplicate products or canonical link
We exist in a niche market with a good % of products that sell well at specific times of the year. Lets say for example a red cup can be sold as a christmas red cup and a valentine red cup or just a red cup. Would we be best to optimize each specific product specifically for those seasons/events on different pages or keep google pointed to just one page using a canonical link.
On-Page Optimization | | LadyApollo0 -
Duplicate Page Title Elements
Hello Mozzers. My questions is below and I would like to thank everyone in advance for any feedback 😉 I own a dog supplies site (www.k9electronics.com). When I launched the site several years back I hired a guy for SEO and he optimized my home page for specific categories search terms such as "dog training collars", "dog shock collars:, ect instead of general search terms such as "dog supplies", "dog accessories", ect. I would like to start moving these home page title element terms (starting with "dog shock collars") over to the dog training collars category but have high rankings for this term on the home page. Current Home Page Title Element:
On-Page Optimization | | k9byron
dog training collars, dog shock collars, electric dog collar, dog supplies (recently added) Current Dog Training Collars Category Title Element:
dog training collars I was hoping to add "dog shock collars" to the dog training collars category page until I achieved higher ranking then delete if from the home page. ..or swap it out with "dog accessories". I am currently ranked #5 in Google for "dog shock collars" on the home page & dog training collars category page ...and I am a little concerned about changing these title elements. My question is; If I add 'dog shock collars" to the dog training collars category page title as well, how will it effect my ranking on both pages having this duplicate term in both page titles? Thank You,
Byron-0