Title optimization best practices for clients with insanely long business names
-
How do others utilize keywords and preserve branding in the title tag for clients with a REALLY long name? Two examples.
Example 1: Business name is 38 characters long in the following format:
[Firstname] [initial] [Lastname] [Businesstype] Services
38 characters is workable, but the keywords for what he offers and this industry in general are long too. He abbreviates to his initials in the domain name - I don't love doing that as the acronym has a meaning of its own. (We unintentionally acquired at least one very amusing if useless backlink thanks to that.) Leaving off "Services" saves a few characters.
Example 2: Business name totals 58 characters and references their two related lines of business. Similar to:
Rogers Institute of Robotic Studies and RIRS Robot Repair
or (saves a few characters)
Rogers Institute of Robotic Studies and Robot RepairHow would you handle that? Use the appropriate half of the name on pages related to that particular LOB? Only use the brand on some pages? Abbreviate more? I've been using their full name on the more "general" pages of the site and omitting it in favor of keywords on the more specific pages .
Suggestions? Other ideas?
-
As mentioned in the other responses go for the targeted keyphrase in the Title Tag if you haven't got enough room to append the company name.
I have come across individuals or organisations that have been adamant that they want it in for "branding" reasons.I just show them the analytics report of more people searching for the service than the brand or if its not an existing site the Google estimated local search volumes.
Usually the figures will win out over any potential vanity.
-
Are users likely to use his name when searching for his site, or are they more likely to search for the kind of service he offers? if the later then forget his name in titles (except maybe the home page). IMO the title should match the likely search query for optimum SEO. And repeating the brand in every title is a waste, IMO. If you have 10 pages optimized for 10 different search queries then the title of each should be (or at least begin with) the likely search query that each page is optimized for.
-
I don't know why everyone has such a fascination with putting their brand name in the title. This is a useless tactic in my opinions. Just make the first words of your meta description be the brand name and save that valuable real estate in the title for the actual keywords that apply relevantly to what the product or service is.
I would advise leaving the brand name out of the titles entirely.
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
-
How many keywords should I optimize a page for?
Hi, There is a lot of debate going on on whether to use a single keyword per page or multiple keywords per page. What I know for sure is that it is not advisable to repeat the same exact keyword in different pages. I need to optimize product pages, categories and pages for an online store and still do not know if it is better to: 1-work with one main keyword per page plus latent semantic keywords, 2-to optimize a page for multiple different keywords (2 to 4 keywords) which are strongly related to the main topic or to the product sold in a particular product page 3- use single keyword for each page (and no more than one keyword per page). Some seo gurus argue this is the best way to get higher ranking for that particular page in the serps. My personal opinion would be 1 or 2, but I would like to hear what you suggest and think about it. Any suggestion or opinion is welcome and appreciated. Thanks in advance
On-Page Optimization | | cinzia090 -
Q&A Page Titles
Hello All! I am currently updating page titles and metadata descriptions for a websites Q&A section and have run in to a problem while updating page titles. Since it is the Q&A section of the website, all of the page titles are around 100 characters and some are up to 200 characters long. Here is an example: Page Title: My child is working below grade level in math. Do I have to purchase the curriculum from the grade below as well? The problem is that this is obviously too long for a SERP to display however I know it is best practice to have matching titles on both the title tag and page title. My question is what hurts SEO value more: the title tag and title of the page not matching or having a very long title displayed on the SERP?
On-Page Optimization | | Myles921 -
Why does Google show old title?
I made some changes to title tags on a clients site over a month ago. Google has since crawled all the pages that the changes were made to. Here's the problem. For some of the pages, the old title is still showing in search results. Why does Google do this? 2) What can I do about it?
On-Page Optimization | | eli.boda0 -
How serious an issue is Title Element Too Long (> 70 Characters)?
Hi, We have about 3000 of these, how serious an issue is this considered? Is it simply the fact that Google won't index the keywords if they are over 70 characters? Could we strip out common words here: 50 Worship Ideas for Small Groups by Stuart Townend | World of Books.com Like 'for', 'by' and probably the '.com'?
On-Page Optimization | | Benj250 -
Titles for WP feeds and categories
SeoMoz comes back with duplicate title errors. However these duplicate errors are /feed pages in Wordpress. http://www.guardianpoolfence.com/choose-pool-fence/feed/ http://www.guardianpoolfence.com/how-to-choose-pool-fence/feed/ Why does this happening with only selected pages? I have many more posts but only these two are coming up with duplicate title errors. Also how do I set up meta descriptions for categories and archive pages for example www.guardianpoolfence.com/2011/07 I am not sure how these pages were created and how to give these individual titles. I mean, titles at all... Anyone?
On-Page Optimization | | Viktoria0 -
Best way to link to an affiliate site.
I have a site that promotes a single affiliate product. Would it be better to have a "buy" button in the content that goes straight to the external affiliates website or should I send it all to an internal page that redirects thus only having 1 external link to the product site.
On-Page Optimization | | jafabel0 -
Page title in SERP question
Has anyone typed in a phrase in Google and seen their listing on the SERP, but the page title on the Google SERP is not what the CMS is set to ? Ie the page title in the SERP is not what is expected? Something related to the company, but not what is set on the CMS… Very odd – has anyone seen something like this before? What could be causing it? Is there a way to change it?
On-Page Optimization | | inhouseninja0
