Page Title Tags - SEO vs CRO ?
-
Hi everyone,
Thanks to what seems to be a recent(ish) algo change in Google, some of our more targeted deeper pages are ranking for search terms where before only our homepage would rank.
This is of course great however I am a little worried that some of the page titles of our internal pages are a little short, for example our main departments (we are an ecommerce store) are titles 'Department Name | Liberty Games' so for example 'Pool Tables | Liberty Games'.
I have heard varying reports on what to do with the title tag, I have heard to keep the most relevant keywords to the left of the tag, which we have done, I have also heard that shorter is better.
I am just a bit concerned that our tags are looking a little stumpy in the serps alongside other results which are longer (although admittedly a bit keyword stuffed).
So (eventually) my question is, will short titles harm my click-through rate ? but are shorter titles better for SEO ? If longer is better are there any recommendations about what I could add to these titles that could potentially help click-throughs and natural rankings ?
Many thanks,
Stuart
-
Awesome find on the snippet optimizer!
-
Awesome find on the snippet optimizer!
-
Thanks for the advice, that article looks great will have a good read of it over the weekend. I think it might just be down to a case of trying various things on a few different pages and see which works best.
-
On the CRO side, usability research actually suggests that (on the web) the first 2 words of a headline carry most of the weight. In SERPs, I think that's even more at play - people scan, they don't read full TITLEs. The natural assumption is that long TITLEs carry more information, but in many cases, what's good for SEO is good for users with titles and headlines.
Of course, you don't want to be too spammy, or just string keywords together - that might get someone's attention but then cost you the click. Overall, though, I wouldn't be afraid of short TITLEs.
More info here in a post from 2009 by Jakob Nielsen:
-
I would try to find a compromise between SEO and CRO. Make the title tag long enough to give the 'scent' of information specifiicty, but not SO long that its hard for the average visitor to scan and absorb.
-
For one of our clients we have purposely trimmed down the title tag two merely two words and reduced the description to a one liner thus creating lovely white space with reading clarity which makes eyes focus on it.
By doing so we've improved our click through rate by 20%.
-
I find this title almost perfect and not spamy if there is a single and a plural version in it and much more user friendly. I recognise the brand name now
I would only put the singular term at the beginning because in that case the search volume is higher with the sigular word.
--> Pool Table, buy pool tables online at Liberty Games
-
Thanks for the response, I should have mentioned "Liberty Games" is our brand term so is at the and after the | of every page on the site.
I did read that it was a good idea to try and target the singular and the plural term in the title tage, so for example 'Pool Tables, buy a pool table online at Liberty Games' - although i'm not sure if this would appear too stuffed as when you search for the singular google already highlights the plural so it clearly knows the link. That said we don't rank as well on the singular so any boost would help.
-
Hi Stuart,
title tag optimization is an important onpage ranking factor.
Just keep in mind the following items:- the title should not be longer as seventy characters in lenght (although the spiders can read them, they are not displayed with more than 70 characters and regarding usability it is best to stay below that number)
- your most prominent keyword(s) should be - as you already wrote - at the left of the title
- don't keyword stuff the title
- just explain in short terms what the visitors are going to find on that page
By the way - I love this tool here http://www.seomofo.com/snippet-optimizer.html
I would suggest to add your brand to the title - you can do that after your category page(s).
Each page should be treated as an individual (starting) page and like that your potential visitors can identify the brand, too and are more comfortable to click.I have never heard about a negative aspect regarding SEO if a title is too short. Just try to keep your title as natural as possible.
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
-
We changed our domain, I used the move tool in Google Search Console and I am having our site redirected and go daddy, and now I spoke with someone who suggest we do a 301 redirect for all pages on our site and I’m not sure that’s the correct move.
We just changed our domain name after 15 years. when I bought the new domain name I called Go Daddy and they instructed me to contact my google G sweet admin account and change all of our emails over which I did and then I went into Shopify who is my host and changed my primary domain there and then I went back to Go Daddy and had my old website forwarded to my new site. since then there has been nothing but problems with Google. my product feed from my merchant center account has been suspended three or four times now, I tried to rename and move all of my Google accounts from my old domain to my new one, but I am not an SEO person... after making the changes I have started google chats with analytics department with the merchant center with Google as they all keep saying that it looks fine but I’m not convinced because the product feed keeps getting disapproved. So I posted an ad for help and the Guy I spoke with suggested I do a 301 redirect for every single page on my old site, But I’m concerned that might confuse things further? I’ve already started the move in Google Search console And in Shopify I added the old domain back into the domains section and am having it redirectEd that way too... I guess I’m just looking to know which way I should proceed, any and all advice is warmly welcome thank you in advance Maureen
Conversion Rate Optimization | | TooFast130 -
Modified broad match vs phrase match strategy - Google Adwords
Hi All, I am looking through a client account that is very mature (10+ years running) on Google AdWords. As soon as it became available, this client adopted a modified broad match (MBM) strategy and has removed all phrase match and exact match keyword types. The account has hundreds of thousands of active keywords. Over the past few years, the CPCs have been rising. While I know that market values of keywords in general have risen consistently year after year, I speculate that this client is actually causing their own prices to go up faster than they should. I have a couple of questions regarding strategy that I am considering that I want to know if anyone else has any experience with... by having many MBM versions of the same keyword, is it possible for cannibalization to occur for most of the variations? Example query: new red running shoes
Conversion Rate Optimization | | dsinger
variations Ad group 1: +red running shoes, +red +running shoes, red +running +shoes, red running +shoes
variations ad group 2: +blue running shoes, +blue +running shoes, blue +running +shoes, blue running +shoes based on the logic of MBM, the possible matches to this query from the available variations are +red running shoes, +red +running shoes, red +running +shoes, red running +shoes, blue +running +shoes, blue running +shoes. So, if the performance of those blue variations trump the more closely related red variations, this searcher may actually see an ad about blue running shoes, even though they have indicated they are more interested in red. in terms of cost, I would anticipate that MBM keywords are more expensive than their phrase match counterparts. can anyone confirm or deny this? My thoughts are that with several years of actual search terms being collected, this client should be able to do a great job of covering almost every variation of keyword that customers have used and create a strong list of phrase match keywords to satisfy all relevant queries. MBM keywords seem like they are a lazy way of getting traffic at a higher cost that can actually cannibalize close variations that exist in the account, causing the wrong ad to be shown based on matching/relevancy and a higher price CPC in the long run. Thoughts?1 -
Brand Name: Conversion Rate Optimizing: Eponymous VS Generic
Good day all, We are entertaining the idea of changing the Domain Name & Brand Name for straplessfashion.com. While still in development, the website sells women undergarments. We did some survey research and it seems that women (age 18-40) really liked either "Demi's Dream" or "Almost Skin" as a good name. More specifically, Almost Skin seems to be the more popular choice over "Demi's Dream". I think "Almost Skin" catches attention quicker and may work best in PPC. However, when personalizing a brand name is considered, "Demi's Dream" might be the best choice. Would you please offer your advise on which of these two names might be the best for a new Domain and Brand name for the website mentioned above? Which would convert better? Thank you for your help. Carlos
Conversion Rate Optimization | | 90miLLA0 -
Need Advice on Home page Conversion Rate Improvement - not much $$s
Anyone out there have some suggestions for how I can improve my home page and increase my lousy conversion rate? I've spent years on the content and SEO optimization of my site and very little time on making a home page that sells stuff. Caveat - I don't have the money to go to one of those fancy companies who do a complete makeover and charge in the tens of thousands. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated! Jean http://www.northwest-wine.com
Conversion Rate Optimization | | JeanYates0 -
SEO For Personalized Content Pages
Hi, We are building a site that has content that personalizes based each visitor. This is being done to serve the most relevant content for conversion purposes and NOT for SEO purposes. So, there are many diferent versions of each page based on the visitor's location, device, browser, keyword-used, traffic source, etc. Obviously, we don't want this to appear like cloaking (it is genuine content personalization) and wondered how Google would view this? What is the safeguard for protecting the website from potential penalties? Any help would be greatly appreciated! Thanks in advance.
Conversion Rate Optimization | | Clickthroo0 -
Improving data tables for Usability & SEO
I have some large html data tables that look horrible (see bottom of http://www.jwsuretybonds.com/surety-bonds/commercial-bonds/auto_dealer_bond.htm). To my surprise, heat map tests actually proved them to be useful in improving our conversion rates to get visitors to apply for the bond they need. We are looking at ways to better the user experience while still keeping the data visible to search spiders. One idea was to use a dropdown list to filter by states. With new web technologies, there must be a better way to utilize this data. What are some alternatives?
Conversion Rate Optimization | | TheDude0 -
Mile long pages with calls to action
Do these mile-long pages with a call to action at the bottom really produce more conversions? For example, see http://www.keywordelite.com/. Has anyone A/B tested this format vs. breaking up the content into tabs or some other format with multiple pages? Personally, these turn me off as they seem disorganized, they take forever to read, and they always sound like scams.
Conversion Rate Optimization | | john4math0 -
Conversion optimization with Optimizely, impact on SEO
I am looking into signing up with www.optimizely.com for conversion testing. They put scripting on my site which will then redirect half of my site visitors to an alternate home page. The site I want to test on is ranking quite well with Google and I do not want to hurt my rankings. And with this set up,what Google will think is my home page is not and so I am essentially sending visitors to a different page than Google reads as my home page in source code. So, my concern is whether this will have a negative impact on my SEO rankings to redirect 50% of site visitors to a different page using this testing tool? I would use Google Web Site Optimizer, but many of my sites are in Wordpress and it seems that Wordpress and web site optimizer are not so compatible. Advice would be appreciated. Thank you, Robert
Conversion Rate Optimization | | Robertnweil11