Page Title
-
Hi All,
I am wondering if you could help me please. I am getting the following result after I run my On-Page Analysis
Avoid Multiple Page Title Elements
_Easy fix _
<dl style="font-style: normal;">
<dt>Page titles</dt>
<dd>"Aquashowers-Shower Repairs Dublin -" and "Aquashowers - Shower Repairs Dublin"</dd>
<dt>Explanation</dt>
<dd>Web pages are meant to have a single title, and for both accessibility and search engine optimization reasons, we strongly recommend following this practice.</dd>
<dt>Recommendation</dt>
<dd>Remove all but a single page title element.</dd>
</dl>
Does this mean that i have 2 pages that are nearly identical or i should only name a page with one word?
The reason i ask is because i have 1 page called
"Aquashowers-Shower Repairs Dublin"
and another called
"Aquashowers-Dublin Shower Repair"
I don't have a page called "Aquashowers - Shower Repairs Dublin" (with the space inbetween the words and the hyphen)
Any help would be great. Thanks again
Aidan
-
Glad that helped, Aidan, but you also really need to get that code problem creating double title tags on all your pages fixed.
The meta-title is one of the most significant on-page ranking factors and until you get rid of that second in your source code, the search engines will see a duplicate title for every page on your site (very bad for rankings), and the search results pages will continue to make up their own page titles rather than use the ones you've crafted.
Let me know if you need more background.
P.
-
Joel/Shiftins/Paul,
Thanks for the great replies. I have a much better understanding now and will change both pages to target different keywords and also change the page title of one of them to reflect this change.
Thanks again. It is very much appreciated.
Cheers
Aidan
-
You actually have two issues, Aidan, but the one the SEOMoz crawl is reporting here is not what folks have mentioned so far.
The warning is telling you that the code of your webpage contains two instances of the meta-title tag. The meta title is found between the <title>tags and only shows in the code, not the rendered version of your page. In your case, there's a version of the meta-title tag on line 84, and another on line 97 in the header section near the top of your page. All of your pages have this double-title problem.</p> <p>If you have two title tags, the search engines won't know which one to use. As a result of this confusion, the search engine is actually discarding your page titles and making up one of its own based on navigation - never as good as trying to get it to display the ones you've actually designed.</p> <p>On closer inspection, your pages have a significant configuration problem because they actually have two (nested) <head> sections. Something is adding a second <head> section that contains the extra unwanted title tag. Perhaps there's a plugin doing this? (See attached image of source code - the circled area is code that should not be there)</p> <p>The second problem, as shiftins and Joel point out , is that if you have multiple pages targeting such similar terms, the search engines will likely be unable to tell which is the most important (authoritative) page. They will essentially split the ranking power for those terms between the two pages, making each rank lower than one would by itself.</p> <p>Paul</p> <br> <br> <a download="6vwja" class="imported-anchor-tag" href="http://imgur.com/6vwja" target="_blank">6vwja</a></title>
-
It is a recommendation based on sound SEO practices but every industry is different. The concern is that the search engine will get confused on which page to rank higher but it is not a major problem. You might end up having both pages on page 1 which would be great for you. This happens often in my industry (Real Estate) where a company will have two pages that are similar but not duplicate, that will end up on page 1.
Why does this happen? Because both pages add value to the web visitor for different issues but have similar titles based on the content. As long as it is done in a way that is for the web visitor and not to game the system it should be fine.
Hope this helps and good luck
-
It means that your page titles are too similar. Especially if you are using keywords in your titles it is poor optimization strategy to name pages similar titles. When google bot crawls your website it will chose which page is more relevant for "shower repairs dublin" or "dublin shower repairs" since they are closely related. This means you are competing with yourself for rankings by having 2 pages with the same title. Hope this helps
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
-
Hiding elements of the page
Hi, Does hiding elements of the page have a negative effect on SEO? The reason I ask is I am using a Wordpress theme however in options if I disable a certain element of the theme that is printed on the page it simply hides it from the user using CSS but it still exists in the code. Could the search engine see this as bad? E.g. like you are trying to keyword stuff by hiding keywords in the page? Thanks.
On-Page Optimization | | mdeluk1 -
How come canonicalized pages are showing in the Duplicate Titles report?
I am currently removing all duplicate titles from my site via title tag changes, 301's, and in some instances, canonical tags. I'm confused about why the Moz report spit out pages with duplicate titles that are canonicalized to other pages. Does Google actually consider these pages as having duplicate titles? Or is Roger Mozbot not intuitive enough to to disregard those pages?
On-Page Optimization | | StevenLevine0 -
Optimal amount of alt and title tags on a landing page?
Hey guys! We are preparing a few product landing pages and want to make sure the alt and title tags are done correctly. We looked at landing pages from Apple and Google Nexus and found that they had very few alt and title tags (or none). Are we missing something here? Should there be an alt for every image and title for every link?
On-Page Optimization | | TVape0 -
Category Page Content
Hey Mozzers, I've recently been doing a content audit on the category and sub-category pages on our site. The old pages had the following "profile" Above The Fold
On-Page Optimization | | ATP
Page Heading
Image Links to Categories / Products
Below the Fold
The rest of the Image Links to Categories / Products
600 words+ of content duplicated from articles, sub categories and products My criticisms of the page were
1. No content (text) above the fold
2. Page content was mostly duplicated content
3. No keyword structure, many pages competed for the same keywords and often unwanted pages outranked the desired page for the keyword. I cleaned this up to the following structure Above The Fold
H1 Page Heading 80-200 Word of Content (Including a link to supporting article)
H2 Page Heading (Expansion or variance of the H1 making sure relevant) 80-200 150 Words of Content
Image Links to Categories / Products
Below the Fold
The rest of the Image Links to Categories / Products The new pages are now all unique content, targeted towards 1-2 themed keywords. I have a few worries I was hoping you could address. 1. The new pages are only 180-300 words of text, simply because that is all that is needed to describe that category and provide some supporting information. the pages previously contained 600 words. Should I be looking to get more content on these pages?
2. If i do need more content, It wont fit "above the fold" without pushing the products and sub categories below the fold, which isn't ideal. Should I be putting it there anyway or should I insert additional text below the products and below the fold or would this just be a waste.
3. Keyword Structure. I have designed each page to target a selction of keywords, for example.
a) The main widget pages targets all general "widget" terms and provides supporting infromation
b) The sub-category blue widget page targets anything related and terms such as "Navy Widgets" because navy widgets are a type of blue widget etc"
Is this keyword structure over-optimised or exactly what I should be doing. I dont want to spread content to thin by being over selective in my categories Any other critisms or comment welcome0 -
Do you say Browser Title or Page Title?
I have seen much more use of "Page Title" of late....in fact hardly any of "Browser Title" except by some folks who are using a very old CMS. We need to go with one at my workplace to avoid confusion. My vote is Page Title. Thoughts? Thanks, Tim
On-Page Optimization | | Jen_Floyd0 -
Category listing page coming above product pages
A new SEO client we have taken on seem to be hitting most of the points right on with their site and SEO. However one thing that is bugging me is that their category pages i.e. "Footwear" which title tag includes the brands they stock. Is almost always coming up above (if they are ever even found) the product individual pages. Anyone seen this sort of things happening? Very frustrating.
On-Page Optimization | | iboxsecurityltd0 -
Different pages for OS's vs 1 Page with Dynamic Content (user agent), what's the right approach?
We are creating a new homepage and the product are at different stages of development for different OS's. The value prop/messaging/some target keywords will be different for the various OS's for that reason. Question is, for SEO reasons, is it better to separate them into different pages or use 1 page and flip different content in based on the user agent?
On-Page Optimization | | JoeLin0 -
Internal Links & Title Tags, Which Page Benifits?
The best way I can explain why question is with an example. Lets say I have a parent parent page that is focusing on a broad keyword.
On-Page Optimization | | donford
I also have a sub-page which is focused more on long-tail keyword variations. When I make an internal link and give it a title tag, should I give it the long-tail keyword for the juice, or should I use the broad keyword for the parent page's relevancy? Thanks for any help, advise or pointers.0