Advice on Title please
-
<y website="" <a="" href="http://www.nile-cruises-4u.co.uk">www.nile-cruises-4u.co.uk was number 1 in Google.co.uk for several years for our main search term "nile cruise" until about 4 months ago when we fell to our current position of 4 or 5.</y>
I am looking at every aspect of optimising the site and wonder if I am using a good enough title for the home page? At the moment it is titled:
Nile Cruise | Nile Cruises | Nile Cruise Bargains
I wonder if I should just call it "Nile Cruise"?
I alreay have a seperat page entitled "Nile Cruise Bargains" and wonder if having that phrase in the homepage title would have any adverse affects?
Earlier this year our site was hacked and we spent 2 weeks with it being unavailable until we had rebuilt and repaired it. After that our position dipped.
We have a Blog going back to 2007 and when we repaired the site the Blog was affected in that although we managed to re-install the hundreds of posts they were without all of the SEO tags and categories, etc, etc.
I've been slowly adding those but there are still hundreds to do. Could this be affecting our page position?
Thanks,
Colin
-
Thanks Keri.
I'll make sure to take off the Links Exchange from the footer.
Colin
-
You wouldn't set up reciprocal links, but instead find ways to get more valuable one-way links. The links section of the blog is a good place to look for ideas on getting good links.
-
Regarding the Link Exchange feature which you have suggested getting rid of...if I do that and then try and build links how would I set up reciprocal links?
Colin
-
Thanks very much Eyepaq. That's a great help.
Cheers.
-
Hi Colin,
Yes, that's right.
However keep in mind that the Title tag length is also a factor.
I would keep the new Title tag and track the results: ctr, rankings and then adjust accordantly if needed.
If CTR dosen't change but you drop a few rankings I would cut down from the Title Tag a little.
Remember that it helps for the keyword to be as closest to the beginning as possibile (if it make sense) - in your case looks good and also the size of the Title Tag as far as characters.
Hope it helps.
-
Eyepaq, I've cahnged the Title to "Nile Cruise | 5 Star Luxury Nile Cruise with Full Excursion Programme" which now shows on the blue top line of IExplorer.
Is that where you suggested that a title with something in it (call to actions, etc) might get better CTR's?
Colin
-
Thanks very much Eyepaq for your suggestions.
I hadnt' thought about the spammy aspect of the current title plus the effect of already having a Nile Cruise Bargains page. I'll do as you suggest with the link from that page too.
I'll set to work on getting those posts on the blog set up as they used to be.
Thanks also for the other issues you flagged up. I'll get those sorted asap.
Much appreciated.
Colin
-
Hi,
There are a few issues with the site - some more important then others.
I will list a few bellow and hopefully those ideas will help you get better.
First of all "Nile Cruise | Nile Cruises | Nile Cruise Bargains" as title tag looks kind of spammy. I would just place, like you said the main one, "nile cruise" and add some call to action to increase CTR.
I alreay have a seperat page entitled "Nile Cruise Bargains" and wonder if having that phrase in the homepage title would have any adverse affects?
** That can cause canibalization issues within your site. I would focus on one page and optimize for long tail on the same page if possible.
Try linking from the page "Nile Cruise Bargains" to your home page in a predominant position or you can even set a rel canonical for this page in order to let Google know what page is your main one for that term.
We have a Blog going back to 2007 and when we repaired the site the Blog was affected in that although we managed to re-install the hundreds of posts they were without all of the SEO tags and categories, etc, etc.
** Yap. That can damage you good especially if those pages were linking to your home page.
A few other issues I am seeing:
-
you have two head tags in the home page. What's up with that ?
-
get rid entirely of the meta keyword tag - on all pages. Dosen't help you.
-
get rid of the link exchange area in your footer - for good - that one can really hurt you.
-
your main page is lacking freshness. can you add something on a ciclic basis ? Some info about your offers, news about Egipt or anything that will make sense for the user to read in correlation with the nile cruises.
There has been a lot of changes in serps in the last period of time. A lot of links were devaluated - that can also be the reason for your drop - or all those combined.
I would start reviewing the link profile very carefully and only build links that make sense - links that are not spammy in nature.
Dose it make sense ?
Hope it was helpful - at least as a start in your assessment.
-
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
-
Titles being too long
I am in process of trying to help a client (who I also am an associate for) and they have over 600 pages (which are images) that have the same info in their tag, missing description, and you are talking 1500-2k pixels in their title. I called the host and the owner of the host said "If you were a real seo you would know that the title length doesn't matter." .... help me out here.
Content Development | | SeobyKP0 -
Need advice on internal links
I run a couple of gadget/technology based blogs, which essentially has news based articles and long form articles such as reviews, tutorials, and tips. Looking for some advice on the strategy for internal links: We have been using internal links in the following ways in articles so far: Links to the category pages at the end of the article (we call it related topics) Links to category pages wherever relevant preferably in the first paragraph. The logic here was that if we can add the link to a category in the first paragraph, which appears on the home page and category page, it will pass the link juice to the category page. Link to relevant articles, mostly by using the full title of the post as we thought that it stands out. Issues with the current strategy: In the case of the 1st strategy, it doesn't seem that natural, so we are not sure if people actually end up clicking them. In case of the 2nd, we have couple of concerns: it could result in linking to a category page twice. One within the article, and the second at the end of the article because of strategy 1. Because the first paragraph also appears on the category pages, it would mean that in some cases we will be linking to the same category page (recursive). In the case of the 3rd strategy, the problem is it does not appear natural so we are sure if it increases the value of the content. I was wondering if we should adopt the following strategy: Get rid of category links at the end of the article. Avoid linking to the category pages in the first paragraph, instead link to the category pages after the first paragraph, so we don't end up with the issue mentioned in b. i. Alternatively, we could remove the excerpts from the category pages so we don't hit the issue of linking to the category page from the category page. Add links more naturally. So have a sentence which talks about the related article and link to it using partial match (keyword phrase) or exact match. Any advice would be greatly appreciated.
Content Development | | Gautam0 -
Need advice on Paying for content?
Hi, We would like to attracting more readers onto our blog by accepting guest posting from external bloggers. Could anyone refer any good artricles on MOZ about the best practices on managing the activities and what would be the normal KPIs and ROI?
Content Development | | LauraHT0 -
Blog and keyword advice
Hi, i am going to add a blog to my site to encourage more visitors as well as encourage google to visit the site more often but i am concerned on a couple of things. The blogs will be on weight loss hypnotherapy, anger management therapy and also gastric band hypnotherapy and i am concerned that by writing a number of articles on this topic that by using the keywords it will lower my rankings for the following keywords, gastric band hypnotherapy, anger management therapy, weight loss hypnotherapy. To help you understand more, i have three sections which are gastric band hypnotherapy, anger management therapy, weight loss hypnotherapy, which rank well with google and i am worried that if i write about these subjects in my blog that it will reduce my rankings. Should i reduce the number of times i use the word gastric band hypnotherapy in my new blog articles and say only say the word once or twice so google does not thing that is my main page on the subject. any help would be great.
Content Development | | ClaireH-1848860 -
Spinning software advice / suggestions
I have 2 websites which sell exactly the same products and have the same product descriptions. Does anyone have any recommended spinning software solutions which I can use to get an alternate product description? Thanks in advance.
Content Development | | Anup_Gohil0 -
Please Explain "Rel Canonical"
I have a travel blog that ranks well for lots of keywords. In my "Notices" section of this site, I found that every page has a rel canonical issue sort of flagged. What does this mean? How can it be fixed? It doesn't seem to bother my traffic, but it'd be nice to have it tidied up. Thanks! The site is www.journeybeyondtravel.com/news
Content Development | | journeybeyondtravel0 -
Title case or lower can URL folders
Is it best to have lower case URLs e.g mydomain.com/hotels-in-london/ or title case like mydomain.com/Hotels-In-London/ I noticed in the seomoz tools that it would report the above two URLs as duplicate if the site had two links using pointing to each URL
Content Development | | NeilTompkins0 -
Meta Title and Description Placement in Wordpress
I noticed in wordpress code that the <title>and <description> are not at the top of the code and rather located a ways down the code and not displayed how previous sites used to be.</p> <p>Does this still matter for SEO.</p> <p>I thought it should have been,</p> <div id="syn_row5" class="SYN_TXT"><span class="HTML_TXT"><span class="HTML_TAG"><<span class="HTML_ELM">title</span>></span><span class="HTML_TAG"></<span class="HTML_ELM">title</span>></span></span></div> <div class="SYN_ROW"> <div id="syn_row6" class="SYN_TXT"><span class="HTML_TXT"><span class="HTML_TAG"><<span class="HTML_ELM">meta</span> <span class="HTML_ATR">name</span>=<span class="HTML_VAL">"Description"</span> <span class="HTML_ATR">content</span>=<span class="HTML_VAL">""</span> /></span></span></div> <div class="SYN_TXT"><span class="HTML_TXT"><span class="HTML_TAG"> <div id="syn_row6" class="SYN_TXT"><span class="HTML_TXT"><span class="HTML_TAG"><<span class="HTML_ELM">meta</span> <span class="HTML_ATR">name</span>=<span class="HTML_VAL">"Keywords"</span> <span class="HTML_ATR">content</span>=<span class="HTML_VAL">""</span> /> (if still needed ?)</span></span></div> <div class="SYN_TXT"><span class="HTML_TXT"><span class="HTML_TAG"><span class="HTML_TXT"><span class="HTML_TAG"> </span></span></span></span></div> <div class="SYN_TXT"><span class="HTML_TXT"><span class="HTML_TAG"><span class="HTML_TXT"><span class="HTML_TAG"><span class="HTML_TXT"><span class="HTML_TAG">Is there a way to do this in Wordpress? Or does placment not matter anymore?</span></span></span></span></span></span></div> </span></span></div> </div></title>
Content Development | | hfranz0