Keyword Placement in Page Title - will changing it make a big difference?
-
Hiya guys
I've noticed since changing my Title of my forum from:
Talk Nightlife | Nightlife and Clubbing forum for the UK
to
Talk Nightlife | Nightlife Forum and Clubbing Guide for the UK (current)
... That its jumped from 22nd to 10th in google for term "nightlife forum"
Am wondering, because of the on site optimisation tool telling me I should put the keyword to the front to something like eg:
Nightlife Forum | Talk Nightlife Clubbing Guide for the UK
Will changing the Keyword and putting it to front of the Title make a big difference?
Your thoughts please guys
Cheers Luke
-
Yep, I like this one too Dana.
I'm sure "UK Clubbing Guide" would have more searches than "Clubbing Guide for the UK" anyway.
-
I'm not a fan of stop words in titles. How about
Nightlife Forum | UK Clubbing Guide | Talk Nightlife
What do you think? I basically just got rid of the "and, for, the" - But it remains very readable.
-
Thanks for your responses guys, very much appreciated. The next step would be to change it, but advise to changing it to what? in your opinion the best.
Talknightlife is a nightlife forum for the Uk (hope you guessed that)
... so it's currently Talk Nightlife | Nightlife Forum and Clubbing Guide for the UK
what you you reckon? changing it to
A: Nightlife Forum and Clubbing Guide for the UK | Talk Nightlife
B: Nightlife Forum | Talk Nightlife a Clubbing Guide for the UK
Nightlife Forum | Talk Nightlife | Clubbing Guide for the UK
I'm ranking 1st for "Uk nightlife forum" / "Nightlife Forum UK" so I don't really need UK at the front.
Thanks for your help so far guys, let me know more your thoughts
Regards Luke
-
Hi Luke!
It is my experience that title tag is still a weight element and the last one. What that means is that first word has more effect then second that has more then third etc. We are not talking about any dramatic but a little little more.
The reason for this and the strongest reason why you should "weight" your most relevant (important) keyword to the front is how the user interact with your search result in the SERP.
Users do a vertical reading which means that our eyes will catch the first 2-3 words while browsing downwards in the SERP, so if dont have your relevant keywords within that "area" you will get less clicks.
That is also why, we in most case (not always) want the brand keyword last, so we can keep as relevant keywords in the beginning of the title as possible.
Also if you auto generate a lot of your titles, it's smarter that if you title is longer than the ~63 characters the brand tag falls out than the relevant keyword for that page.Also a note, if Talk Nightlife Clubbing Guide for the UK is your "brand tag" I would recommend to rework it to something shorter, to leave more room to page specific information to the left.
-
Actually blogs are talking too much about link building that it seems like on-page optimization is less important or some even come to me for link building on their website with any on-page optimization was not proper.
I think On-page optimization is really important and out of all the on-page factors title tag is one of the most important one. I think if title tag can be handled correctly you can actually beat your very powerful competitors for some of the highly competitive key phrases.
-
Hi Luke,
Most of the initial jump was probably due to the fact that "nightlife forum" wasn't actually in your original page title. You had the 2 individual words in your title but they weren't placed next to each other, thus Google reads them as "nightlife" and "forum".
By putting them together it signals to Google that you're trying to rank for that phrase.
As for the placement of keywords at the beginning of your page title, sure it helps a little. I usually recommend having the brand/web site name at the end. I'd go for something like:
Nightlife Forum and UK Clubbing Guide | Talk Nightlife
Your site will rank for "Talk Nightlife' anyway, it doesn't need to be at the beginning of the title.
Hope this helps!
-
In short yes it makes a difference. However Primary Keywords vs Branded Keywords can influence your CTR.
If you have a high affinity Brand I certainly would consider putting those at the front of the page otherwise I have always follow the specific to general format.
-
I too have seen this kind of change make a big difference, but sometimes it;s short term and the page sinks back down to where it was before. I think a new page title makes Google bot temporarily "curious" and it thinks "Oh I've found a new page!" Remember, bots aren't as smart as humans, so it takes them a while to catch on.
It's great that your page moved up. Watch it for a month and see what happens. If it retains its position, then maybe it's a good tactic to try on other pages
It could be that the change you made was a better "title" for the actual page. Finding better, more accurate, concise and descriptive titles that really hone in on what your page is about is always a good thing.
Hope that helps!
-
Yes! It's really make big different, my experience, i'm working on many of keywrods very compete last month, keyword in begin of title help me ranking better (from 14 > 4 within 4 day, 8 > 5 within 7 day... ).
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
-
Page Title versus H1 title
What's the difference between the Page Title and the H1 title? It seems like both summarize the page. Is it a wasted opportunity to make them the same? Should they be similar but slightly different?
On-Page Optimization | | amybethmegjo1 -
We use Bigcommerce and want to make changes to our mobile site
Our current mobile site does not show the banners we use on the desktop site. Can anyone tell us how we can change the mobile site to show these banners.
On-Page Optimization | | CostumeD0 -
Is there any decent web browser that still displays the full page title at the top of the page?
I just updated to the latest version of Firefox on my Mac and saw that they now hide most of the page title in the browser tab, like Chrome and Safari. I like to be able to see the full page title at all times (for reasons I'm sure you all understand) and that's pretty much the only reason I stuck with Firefox all these years. Now I'm looking for an alternative – any suggestions?
On-Page Optimization | | matt-145671 -
Ranked page is not desired page
I have a question on a problem I am currently faced with. There is a certain keyword that my employer wants to rank for. The good news is that sometimes it does rank in the top 5 pages of Google. (It drops in and out) The bad news is that it is going to a page that we need to keep, but not the ideal place we want people who are looking for that keyword to go to. I was wondering if anyone has had any experience with this type of situation and what tactic they used to get people to the better page.
On-Page Optimization | | trumpfinc1 -
Several keywords and only one page to posicionate
Hi there! I'm new in SEOMOZ and the SEO world (so excuse me if the question is so elemental.....). I'm having trouble when trying to apply the right seo strategy to one of the page of my companys corporate site. My company offers serveral services in the field of the communications&advertisement. Not being considered as different items in the services menu of the website is a requirement for the company. They want to describe them (all services) in a single page. The problem is that there's one title, one description tag, one url and many relevant keywords related. Should I convince them that this structure is a bad one regarding SEO or there's a way to solve this situation? Thanks in advanced.
On-Page Optimization | | juanmiguelcr0 -
Please review page for on page SEO
I'm working on an adult dating site review blog and am hoping to build links to the category pages. It's a wordpress blog so the posts are categorised by topics. However can you tell me if there is enough content on the page for google to identify what the page is about? The problem is that the content of each category pages is pulled from the posts. What I think is needed is some static text on the page 2-300 words that use the keyword. Here's an example of a page targeting the keywords 'online dating'. http://www.top-10-dating-reviews.com/category/online-dating/
On-Page Optimization | | SamCUK
[editor's note -- thumbnails on site may not be appropriate for some workplaces] Will the page rank like this if there are a good amount of authorative links or does the page itself need work?0 -
How to mass change Title and Description of a website
Hey , I recently landed a client and his website has a lot of pages. After running a diagnostics in SEOmoz it seems like a lot of them dont have titles and descriptions. Also the ones that have titles and descriptions are not well optimized. I want to change/create titles and descriptions of this website but the problem is it has got 1000s of pages. So I was wondering is there an automated way of doing this? Thanks a lot in advance. Regards
On-Page Optimization | | MerilynL0 -
Will changing the title tags cause me to lose rankings?
I have a site that gets pretty decent rankings. Based on Seomoz's assessment of my site I have ALOT of title tags that are too long. If I make modifications to my title tags will that hurt my rankings? I am also thinking of removing my company name from the title tag as that is taking up too much space.
On-Page Optimization | | webestate1