Title tag questions
-
General title tag questions
-
how important is it not to change your title tag, I own a prom dress site and I'm always changing them between prom and homecoming'
-
Is it bad to have title tags that are only different by one word across thousands of pages on your site. I have thousands of dresses so each title tag only varies by the style #
-
I have always had title tags that are for example black prom dresses, well i recently discovered that just black dresses is googled 10 times the amount so im debating changing them to black dresses so that the word dresses is closer to the front of the title tag, am I over reacting or is that a good idea or would it be bad to put black dresses, black prom dresses, black homecoming dresses
-
I also put the year in almost every title tag 2012, is that bad, I ranked great for 2012 stuff but could it hurt my homepage domain rankings on major broader keywords
-
-
Agreeing with Egol that if you are ranking well than something must be done right. If I had hierarhical categories maybe I would try to always link back to the upper category with the proper anchor, like if you have dresses -> prom dresses -> black prom dresses link bacj from black prom dresses to prom dresses with this anchor so that google knows that these are really two pages that need to be seperate however only differing in one word.
I once had a site where similarity of title tags came into play. It offered pizza for 23 districts and I tried with pizza deliverry 13th distirct than pizza delivery 14th district. Now that was obviously too little difference for google as 3-4 districts were displayed in the first few places of the serps, 10 were still on first page but the others were far left behind.
Look at the rankings for the pages with nearly the same title like black prom dresses and white prom dresses and pink prom dresses. If none of them is left far behind than titles are considered to be different.
-
But i rank page one for every single product so i get great traffic from long tail, but what Im afraid of is that google is hurting my broader search terms b./c it looks at my overall site and doesnt see enough diversity in title tags even though none are identical, is that true or does google just analyse keyword by keyword and doesnt let other pages effect SERP.
It sounds like you are doing quite well. If you have a site about widgets google is going to expect a lot of title tags about different types, styles, colors and sizes of widgets. I think that the same thing holds true for dresses. I have lots of pages on my sites that are variants on a theme and they have title tags that are crafted similar to what you describe.
If it is working keep doing it.
I asked about doing black dresses, black prom dresses, black homecoming dresses as one title tag, im sure this is overkill for dresses but i need to get adjectives in but would black dresses for prom and homecoming give as much of a match with less keyword stuffing.
I might approach this at the "category" level. I would have category pages for prom and homecoming. Some dresses that might be worn to two different types of events might be listed on two category pages and receive a link from each of them with different anchor text. That will help that product page rank for two different category terms.
Think about more category pages. They can be powerful in the SERPs, present your products with different accessories and hit common product pages with various anchor text.
-
how important are the first 2 words in a title tag then, I can do what you said and make all my title tags different but I was afraid to b/c by doing a systematic approach I make sure my manufacturer and product # are the first 2 words and that is how people google it but by doing so it does not lead to diversity. But i rank page one for every single product so i get great traffic from long tail, but what Im afraid of is that google is hurting my broader search terms b./c it looks at my overall site and doesnt see enough diversity in title tags even though none are identical, is that true or does google just analyse keyword by keyword and doesnt let other pages effect SERP. Heres the main question I guess that goes along with that, if im trying to rank high for prom dresses does it look at how many of my pages title tags have prom dresses in it to determine my overall prom dresses ranking for my homepage domain.
One side question is earlier I asked about doing black dresses, black prom dresses, black homecoming dresses as one title tag, im sure this is overkill for dresses but i need to get adjectives in but would black dresses for prom and homecoming give as much of a match with less keyword stuffing.
-
1) how important is it not to change your title tag, I own a prom dress site and I'm always changing them between prom and homecoming'
I believe that you can change it occasionally (a couple times a year) without adverse results. However, I have experience with changing it frequently (every few days) and my pages seemed to be demoted.... but then original rankings came back when I stopped monkeying with it.
2) Is it bad to have title tags that are only different by one word across thousands of pages on your site. I have thousands of dresses so each title tag only varies by the style #
I honestly think that you should put a little more work into this. Do each of these thousands of dresses look identical? No... so use your imagination to be more explicit - it might bring you more traffic because you will have diverse title tags.
Get provocative with some of these, get reserved with others, shout a value proposition in others.
Do this and see if it increases the total traffic into your site
3) I have always had title tags that are for example black prom dresses, well i recently discovered that just black dresses is googled 10 times the amount
If you can rank for the exact match query "black dresses" then go for it. Otherwise include more restrictive adjectives that are relevant to the product. I believe in a diversity of text in title tags, and product descriptions. I think that it gives your entire site greater keyword reach.
4) I also put the year in almost every title tag 2012, is that bad, I ranked great for 2012 stuff but could it hurt my homepage domain rankings on major broader keywords
Go into your analytics to see if anybody is visiting your site as a result of placing the year in the title. If yes then you might have a good thing. If no, then use that space for something that might pull traffic.
Some final comments.... It is good that you are thinking about these things but I think that you can learn a lot and get firm answers to your questions by experimenting and carefully watching your analytics.
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
-
Question about my website ranking
Hi everyone I have sports website. My website DA, DR is good. I have created good quality backlinks. But still my website ranking is not improving. Can you guide me how to improve my website ranking. Thanks in advance!
On-Page Optimization | | fktos.tam.906n0 -
Regarding Google Title 'Width' and changing Meta Titles w/o Penalty?
A vast majority of pages on my site are now too wide (the character count was fine prior to the March update). I want to go through and update them so they display properly and are not too wide.However, I am concerned, as my understanding was that changing Meta Titles is dangerous and can have a negative effect on your rankings and can cause real issues. Is this an opportunity to change my Titles all-together without any kind of penalty? Or can I only trim the end part? In summary: 1. Can I edit all of my Meta Titles without affecting my rankings? 2. If no, how do I edit them properly to fit within the proper width and not cause any issues? 3. If yes, I can go through and change all my Meta Titles to whatever extent and optimize them to reflect latest best practices? There are changes I wanted to make to all my meta titles but I've been afraid to... due to fear of rankings drops etc Any help with this would be greatly appreciated
On-Page Optimization | | lawfirm0 -
What are the benefits of the URL meta tag?
We have too many meta tags and want to get rid of all the outdated ones. However, we don't want to eliminate valuable meta tags by mistake. So, before we say goodbye to the URL meta tag, we want to make sure we understand the pros and cons, if any. By the way, we are not referring to canonical URL tags, just URL as in:
On-Page Optimization | | GRIP-SEO0 -
How google handle with Title when is invisible on the page?
I would like to display H1 Title tag invisible on the homepage. I set up Title colour same colour as background colour. How google handle with this cloaking? What should I to set up in the style.css?
On-Page Optimization | | joeko0 -
Phrase duplication within Title Tags
I'm creating a few hundred category level pages on my site, and am wondering if duplicating a phrase within each title tag is OK to do: Examples: 1) Title Tag for a page that provides brochure templates for the child care industry. - Title Desired: Child Care Brochure Templates | Brochure & Flyer Maker 2) Title Tag for a page that provides brochure templates for the financial services industry. ** - Title Desired: ** Financial Services Templates | Brochure & Flyer Maker Question: Is it OK to repeat what is after the pipe in each title tag (i.e. 'Brochure & Flyer Maker') on a few hundred category level pages. It's definitely an accurate description of what you will find on the page, however I don't want to run the risk of duplicate content / keyword stuffing issues. Essentially, can I use an exact duplicate phrase inside multiple title tags and be OK?...or is this not advised? I appreciate any advice or feedback. Thanks. -J
On-Page Optimization | | cre80 -
Title Tag, Are the Keywords Plucked out of it?
We are working on redoing our site and I read the article from rand about how to properly format title tags, here http://www.seomoz.org/blog/tactical-seo-how-many-termsphrases-should-i-target-on-a-single-page He showed how he could take 6 keywords and use them all in the title tag: The title Tag:
On-Page Optimization | | donford
Ted Baker London - Men's Clothing Collections 2005-2008 | Sartorialmoz.org The keywords:
Ted Baker
Ted Baker London
Ted Baker Clothing
Ted Baker Mens
Ted Baker Mens Clothing
Ted Baker Mens Collection So what I am wondering is the keyword Ted Baker Mens Collection actually getting found. In this case we are dealing with a contraction (men's) and a plural form of a keyword (collections). Is it plucked out from the title tag above?
Like this? Ted Baker London - Men's Clothing Collections 2005-2008 | Sartorialmoz.org In his article he goes on to say the biggest mistake he sees is, unfortunately exactly the way our site was built 6 years ago. That is people doing this: Ted Baker, Ted Baker London, Ted Baker Clothing, Ted Baker Men's Clothing, Ted Baker Clothing Collection - Buy Online Now at Manamialameseo.com Our site does just that, while we are PR 4 and get decent traffic for the business we are in, we are doing a huge update with new pages, information, and most importantly trying to get all the SEO the best as possible. I want to make sure before we make these what could be huge impact changes that search engines do in fact Pluck the keywords from the title tag, and they are not required to be together. Thank you for any thoughts, answers and most importantly your time. Example following this formula: Our Top 3 Keywords:
Molded Rubber
Rubber Molding
Custom Molded Rubber Our Old way:
Title: Custom Molded Rubber, Rubber Molding, Molded Rubber
The new way:
Title: Custom Molded Rubber - Molding Services | OurSite.com0 -
Canalogical Tag
Hello, I wanted to have a clean url for example : site.com/producta and our web developer installed this module which does this great. However there are now two products one with unclean url for example sit.com/productaxmlayoiadkja and the clean one - on both pages page it says: <link rel="canonical" href="http://www.site.com/producta">Is this correct? Reason being is I'm aiming for the long tail and the site is not getting any visitor although we have unqiue 250 products+ and getting less then 20 visitors a day after almost a year! I would appreciate any help because I'm getting in real trouble because the site is performing so badly!
On-Page Optimization | | reallyitsme0 -
I have a direct question about file structure.
This question is about a new file structure and SEO friendly URL's. Does a file name make a difference? I have a direct question about file structure. Our old site was formated with a URL of http://rousechamberlin.com/about_us.aspx our new site is structured http://rousechamberlin.com/AboutUs/ no file no extension. As the SEO guy of the company and not the programmer my feeling is this is killing us. Does anybody have any thoughts on this?
On-Page Optimization | | HeadWebChef0