Am I keyword stuffing my titles?
-
I run a site where I answer questions. As I answer each question I choose a title for the page. I have been trying to get good keywords in my titles, but now I am wondering if I have been keyword stuffing them and perhaps I should be more succinct.
So, let's say I had a question about a sore back. Here would be the title tag I would use:
Why is my back sore? I have spinal pain and need relief and help. | My Main Keyword
That's a fictitious example, but the idea is that I would be trying to get the keywords "back", "sore", "spinal", "pain", "relief" "help" and my main website keyword into the title.
As I'm writing this I'm seeing the folly in this. I think it would likely be much better to simply have a title of
Why is my back sore?
So, I have three questions:
1. Is it better to have a succinct title targeting one keyword/keyword phrase than to get lots of keywords in my title?
2. Should I be putting my main keyword after each of my title? Shortly after doing this on 1700+ pages I was #1 for my main keyword. But, I was also doing other things as well to boost my presence for this keyword.
3. If I decide to do more succinct titles, how would you suggest I go about running a test to see which is better?
Looking forward to your responses! Thanks!
-
If the title is relevant to the content then that's good, but from a technical sense: You shouldn't repeat any word in a title more than twice, and each instance of that word should be separated by at least one other word. Then, you have to think about what the titles are going to be on your other pages, I'd say you're more in danger of keyword canibalization within your title in that example than of keyword stuffing (assuming the rest of the site is about back pain, etc...).
-
Ah, thanks EGOL!
So, I will experiment with taking the site keyword off of the end, but keep doing what I am doing with my question titles.
But, perhaps, if I am writing an article about a specific problem I will have a succinct title there.
-
"spamming keywords"
I think that "spamming" occurs when you have keywords in the title that are not descriptive of the article.....
or.... when you just make a big list of keywords without composing them into a coherent question or statement...
I think that "Why is my back sore? I have spinal pain and need relief and help." is not in the "spam" category. (although I might shorten it down to about 60 characters)
-
"Why is my back sore? I have spinal pain and need relief and help."
I like the above for the reasons below.
-- I believe that questions elicit clicks better than statements.
-- You have lots of potential keywords in the title tag. Will work great for pulling in long tail traffic
I believe that the succinct title is good when you have a very powerful site and are gunning for a very basic and difficult keyword. However, if you use that succinct title on lots of pages then you will run into duplication. The longer title will diversify your optimization and pull a greater diversity of traffic.
-
1. Try to avoid spamming keywords into your titles. Keep them Short(ish), informative and helpful.
Maybe a title of "Why is my back sore? asked in Back & Neck Pain". This assumes your categories questions, so the "Back & Neck Pain" bit is your category title.
2. Having a keyword in thousands of page title is not going to be of any significant benefit to your site and it rankings.
3. I would gauge the success by simply applying your new found titling technique to the next few questions you process, follow their success and compare to previous questions.
Keep in mind that your existing 1700 pages may be getting ranked well for phrases which are well optimised in your current titling system. perhaps only apply the new technique to new questions only.
Good luck
-
There is a lot to this question. I think the way you are doing titles now is probably great for increasing the click through, mostly because they are in context. I would venture to guess you may be able to get more impressions by changing this up, but I always recommend quality over quantity. This being said I have NO IDEA what your traffic goals/stats look like. Good Luck!
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
-
Difference keyword and co-occurence
Could someone explain me what the difference between a keyword and a co-occurence is ? Thank you,
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | seoanalytics0 -
Secondary related keywords
Hello, Do my secondary related keywords need to also come out as subjects in my sentences or can they be objects / predicate. Thank you,
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | seoanalytics1 -
How to measure traffic for a keyword
Sitting in Country A I want to see how much traffic a particular keyword receives in Country B. Whats the best way to do it? Also, will the search results differ if I am analyzing the above sitting in Country A viz-a-viz Country B. In other words, will the IP of the country I am making the search from play a role in the results?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | KS__0 -
Is it alright to repeat a keyword in the title tag?
I know at first glance, the answer to this is a resounding NO, that it can be construed as keyword stuffing,
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | MIGandCo
but please hear me out. I am working on optimizing a client's website and although MOST of the title tags
can be optimized without repeating a keyword, occasionally I run into one where it doesn't read right if I
don't repeat the keyword. Here's an example: Current title:
Photoshop on the Cloud | Adobe Photoshop Webinars | Company Name What I am considering using as the optimized title:
Adobe Photoshop on the Cloud | Adobe Photoshop Webinars | Company Name Yes, I know both titles are longer than recommended. In both instances, only the company name gets
truncated so I am not too worried about that. So I guess what I want to know is this: Am I right in my original assumption that it is NEVER okay to
repeat keywords in a title tag or is it alright when it makes sense to do so?0 -
Easy way to change wordpress category titles. Currently categories are appearing with the same title?!
I'm working on a wordpress adult dating review site and have started to set up categories for each of my main keywords. I have also started to add sub categories by county and town and so far have done so for the counties of 'Lincolnshire' and 'Derbyshire'. The problem is though that for each of my subcategories the page titles are appearing the same. For example: www.mysite.com/category/online-dating/lincolnshire/spalding (root category online dating) shows the title as 'Spalding'. www.mysite.com/category/adult-dating/lincolnshire/spalding also has the title 'Spalding' even though it's root category is different (adult dating). It's probably easier to go to http://www.top-10-dating-reviews.com to see how it's set up. If you click in the category text in the top menu and navigate to dating/derbyshire/alfreton for example and then adult dating/derbyshire/alfreton you'll notice the page titles are the same. I use all in one SEO pack and have rewrite titles checked with category titles set to %category_title% | %blog_title%. I also use category SEO updater. In order to prevent duplicate content issues how can I simply make the title of each category category root title/category subtitle(county)/category subtitle 2(town). The title of each category page would then read for example Online Dating Lincolnshire Spalding.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | SamCUK0 -
Keyword Targeting Best Practices??
What is the best way to target a specific keyword? I rank well for several of my keywords but want to do better on others. How do I go about doing this?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | bronxpad0 -
How to Target Keyword Variations?
I have a list of keywords I'm trying to target and they are essentially different variations of each other: Example: blue yankees baseball hat yankees blue baseball hat yankees baseball hat in blue Should I be targeting all these on the same page, or should I be making a new page for each one? Thanks Mozzers!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ATMOSMarketing560 -
Do keywords for my homepage matter?
Prob the most n00b question of all, but once I understand this I will be able to research on my own from here: If a search engine produces results by the keywords from individual website posts/pages, then how are the keywords I choose for my homepage so important if the general homepage meta-tag keywords are essentially ignored by the search engines? Should I repeat my primary keywords on EVERY post, in addition to the ones that relate to that individual post or am I misunderstanding something fundamental? My new site is http://splatterMUSIC.com and I want to be at the top of the results for anyone wanting to watch music vlogs, album reviews, music lessons, funny music-related videos, new non-major label music videos, and all kinds of other concert footage, etc.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | SEOsolver0