Page Title
-
My website was hacked last November and then again last week. Prior to the hacking we were at number one in Google.co.uk for our main search term "nile cruises' for years.
After last November's hacking we dropped to about position 4 and after last week we are at position 7.
Ima rebuilding the lost data and I am having to create new Title and Description meta data for each of the indexed pages.
I am taking the opportunity to try and ensure my titles and descriptions are good and the correct length, etc but wondered about the best title format.
I set our home page title over the weekend as:
Nile Cruise | Leading ABTA & ATOL Bonded UK Nile Cruise Specialist
I was going to try and cover 3 keyphrases in the title like this:
Nile Cruise | Nile Cruises | Nile Cruise Bargains
But I thought that might look a bit spammy because the 3 phrases are very similar.
I wondered what anyone else might suggest?
Thanks,
Colin
-
I agree Nathan. Thanks.
I'm going to take Marcus's and your advice with the title.
Cheers,
Colin
-
Thanks Marcus. I'm hoping that that's the case.
The annoying thing si that "information-wise" we are a much better site. We have Blog posts and information going back to 2007 and much more content but that site still ranks above us at the moment.
However I intend to fight the good fight as you say. I think membership of SEOMoz is going to be a great help especially when you can call upon the kindness of people like yourself to share their knowledge.
Thanks,
Colin
-
HI Colin,
I agree with Marcus's response below. Getting all the keywords in the title tags and not sounding spammy can be tough, especially when dealing with the home page since that page can sometimes be the catch all page.
From what I have been told it does not benefit you to repeat the same word more than once like you do in this example.............Nile Cruise | Nile Cruises | Nile Cruise Bargains. By repeating Nile 3 times you are missing out on being able to include other keywords.
His example is a great example - Nile Cruises & Cruise Bargains - UK ABTA & ATOL Cruise Specialist
It includes a different variation of each (singular or plural)
-
Hey, I would question the quality of that competitors links if they suddenly got 6000 and currently opensiteexplorer and such don't really account for quality so just keep fighting the good fight and try to create a better and more informative site than your competitor.
-
Hi Marcus,
Thanks for that advice and your suggestions. Hopefully (in some way) the drop might be a result of the Google changes and perhaps with hard SEO work I can regain our lost position.
One of our competitors seemed to appear from nowhere last November with about 6,000+ links which dwarfs our back link total. So I think it will be hard to overtake them very quickly but perhaps on-page and content improvements will help us compete.
We do have a WP blog on the site but the main site is built on Cold Fusion.
Colub
-
Hey Colin, I much prefer a good branded or descriptive title so this:
Nile Cruise | Leading ABTA & ATOL Bonded UK Nile Cruise Specialist
Is way better than this: Nile Cruise | Nile Cruises | Nile Cruise Bargains
If you wanted to cover those phrases or words you could always try to work them in to the title in a more natural way say something like.
Nile Cruises & Cruise Bargains - UK ABTA & ATOL Cruise Specialist
That is a super quick example but it works in many more of the words and phrases in a non spammy way. Sure you could do better!
Also, with all the changes in search of late (penguin, panda etc) then don't assume the hack was the loss of your rankings, it could be the natural moving target nature of search or one of many other causes. By the way, what are you using that is getting hacked so often? WordPress? There are options to easily toughen it up and just going that little step extra is usually enough to put off most 'hackers'.
Hope this helps
Marcus
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
-
SEO Moz Says I have Multiple Page Title Elements
I am getting this recommendation from page grader. I recently added Yoast to my site. Can you confirm that I really have multiple title tags because my seo guy says it is fine and it is just a problem with the crawl. I think I see it on line 18 and line 125 am I correct? urbanforestprofessionals.com
On-Page Optimization | | lehcherry0 -
Optimizing pages for keywords
I have a couple of websites for retailing the western chaps manufactured by my company. I have recently tried to increase my learning for SEO since one of my main sites (started in 2006) just lost about 45% of it's organic search volume since the end of May. It seems my search to learn just creates more and more questions. I have been using google adwords for several years now and have used that information to find the most searched keywords. There are some general keywords like western chaps and cowboy chaps that receive decent search volume. If I get more specific to a certain type of chap, chinks for example, the popular high volume keywords are chinks, chinks chaps, western chinks, and cowboy chinks. These all relate to one type of chap...the chink. I want to be visible for these keywords, but how does one optimize for more than one without diluting? Should I also try to optimize on the homepage of my sites for the general terms like western chaps and cowboy chaps? Can I optimize for both? I could really use some help. Any experts out there up to the job of consulting for me, some with extensive knowledge and experience? I'm not looking for the SEO giants with hundreds of clients. I don't feel that I will get the proper value from those types. My company is small and spending is an issue, that's why I would like someone to consult with. I should be able to do most of the labor, I just need the knowledge.
On-Page Optimization | | Kelly_S0 -
Duplicate Page Content for Product Pages
Hello, We have one website which URL is http://www.bannerbuzz.com & we have many product pages which having duplicate page content issue in SEOMOZ which are below. http://www.bannerbuzz.com/backlit-banners-1.html
On-Page Optimization | | CommercePundit
http://www.bannerbuzz.com/backlit-banners-10.html
http://www.bannerbuzz.com/backlit-banners-11.html
http://www.bannerbuzz.com/backlit-banners-12.html
http://www.bannerbuzz.com/backlit-banners-13.html We haven't any content on these pages, still getting duplicate page content errors for all pages in SEOMOZ. Please help me how can i fix this issue. Thanks,0 -
Should I autogenerate 25k pages?
My main product is database conversion software. As we support tons of databases, it's pretty easy to generate thousands of pages simply by creating a template and changing source/target database name, some information on how to connect etc. Of course, getting links to that many autogenerated pages is close to impossible. So, not wanting to endanger my main site (http://www.spectralcore.com) I created a separate site (minisite) for this product alone (http://www.fullconvert.com). In two months this new site is live, it got to the point of having over 1k visitors per month. That's for a site with no inbound links or history. Now, my question is - should I create equivalent thing on my main site, with different template to avoid duplicate content - and leverage history and authority - or Google can get me penalized for this practice. I don't think 25k generated pages are a bad thing, they simply provide for tons of highly targeted landing pages. Am I wrong?
On-Page Optimization | | metadata0 -
Why there's a full-stop in the title of SEOMOZ's home page?
Hello, I see there's a full-stop (.) in the title of SEOMOZ's home page. Why is it so? Regards
On-Page Optimization | | IM_Learner0 -
On Page Optimisation Reports
Firstly sorry if this has already been answered - I did look I promise.
On-Page Optimization | | Jock
Secondly sorry if the answer to this is blatently obvious! In the process of trying to optimise my landing pages, I am using On Page Optimisation reports. I have several (ok lots) with F grades which is not surprising as the landing page is not the landing page optimised for a certain keyword. If I change the landing page to the one that I have for a certain keyword then hey presto A or B grade (clever me)! Now here's the thing - presumably the landing page that is listed by default is the one that Google "sees" for a particular keyword. How do I change this if I can or do I have to be patient or am I just being plain daft?! Many thanks0 -
Should H1s be used in the logo? If they are and it is dynamic on each page to relate to the page content, is this detrimental to the site rather than having it in the page content?
On some sites, the H1 is contained within the logo and remains consistent throughout the site (i.e. the company name is in the of the logo). If the h1 in a logo is dynamic for each page (i.e. on the homepage it is company name - homepage) is this better or worse to have it changed out on the logo rather than having it in the page content?
On-Page Optimization | | CabbageTree0 -
Would it be bad to change the canonical URL to the most recent page that has duplicate content, or should we just 301 redirect to the new page?
Is it bad to change the canonical URL in the tag, meaning does it lose it's stats? If we add a new page that may have duplicate content, but we want that page to be indexed over the older pages, should we just change the canonical page or redirect from the original canonical page? Thanks so much! -Amy
On-Page Optimization | | MeghanPrudencio0