Different Title Tag and Page Headline
-
My editorial team won't budge with their headlines which are excruciatingly vague ... But I have managed to convince them to let me optimize the title tags and the URLs.
Is this sub-optimal or are there some benefits to having a title tag that varies from the page headline or what our dev team calls the "reader friendly" title?
For example...
Their headline: Increase Your Retirement by 20% with This Safe, Simple Strategy
My title tag: Compound Returns: How to Increase Your Retirement 20%
Thanks for the help,
E
-
Thanks for the reply. Both answers show that there is no harm here and potentially a lot of benefits.
-
Great tips, thanks. And the percentage sign... never thought about that.
-
_Great effort. Just make sure that the Page header and Title tag are not conveying different meaning. Title tag should be using main keywords and this tag is predominantly used for search engines, whereas page headers should be used for general visitors. So, there is no harm of going a bit creative with this page header. _
-
I think there could potentially be great advantages to having a different title tag from the page headline. The title tag gives you the opportunity to boil that headline down to its most important parts.
The title tag should avoid stop words. Think about the title tag as if you were a librarian. I don't know how old you are, but remember in the old days when you had to ue a card catalog to search for things? You never used words like "for, and, the, at, with" etc. Those took up space on the cards and made things harder to find.
Here's a hypothetical example. The "reader friendly" title of the first Harry Potter Book was:
Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone
Do you know how most people search for that book? (Library or Online, doesn't matter) - right, they search "Harry Potter - Book 1"
Okay, so the best title for the page would be "Harry Potter Book 1"
You did a good job at eliminating stop words from your title. However, also be cognizant of the character limitations in Google for displaying titles. You are good with 53 characters. I'd say 59-65 absolute max. Otherwise, you risk being truncated in ways you don't want/
A word of caution. That "%" sign at the end of your title could pose a problem for some engines. It might be better to spell out "percent."
I really hope this is helpful!
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 to generate an automatic title and meta description for lots of pages
Hi, I'm working on a big website that will have new pages every month. I would like to find a plug-in or something free to generate automatic title and meta description for futur new pages. Thanks you for your help!
On-Page Optimization | | Maely0 -
Should we rename and update a page or create a new page entirely?
Hi Moz Peoples! We have a small site with a simple site navigation, with only a few links on the nav bar. We have been doing some work to create a new page, which will eventually replace one of the links on the nav bar. The question we are having is, is it better to rename the existing page and replace its content and then wait for the great indexer to do its thing, or perm delete the page and replace it with the new page and content? Or is this a case where it really makes no difference as long as the redirects are set up correctly?
On-Page Optimization | | Parker8180 -
Which is better? One dynamically optimised page, or lots of optimised pages?
For the purpose of simplicity, we have 5 main categories in the site - let's call them A, B, C, D, E. Each of these categories have sub-category pages e.g. A1, A2, A3. The main area of the site consists of these category and sub-category pages. But as each product comes in different woods, it's useful for customers to see all the product that come in a particular wood, e.g. walnut. So many years ago we created 'woods' pages. These pages replicate the categories & sub-categories but only show what is available in that particular wood. And of course - they're optimised much better for that wood. All well and good, until recently, these specialist page seem to have dropped through the floor in Google. Could be temporary, I don't know, and it's only a fortnight - but I'm worried. Now, because the site is dynamic, we could do things differently. We could still have landing pages for each wood, but of spinning off to their own optimised specific wood sub-category page, they could instead link to the primary sub-category page with a ?search filter in the URL. This way, the customer is still getting to see what they want. Which is better? One page per sub-category? Dynamically filtered by search. Or lots of specific sub-category pages? I guess at the heart of this question is? Does having lots of specific sub-category pages lead to a large overlap of duplicate content, and is it better keeping that authority juice on a single page? Even if the URL changes (with a query in the URL) to enable whatever filtering we need to do.
On-Page Optimization | | pulcinella2uk0 -
What's the best SEO tactics when you have a dedicated web address pointing to a page on a different site?
Hope someone can help with a question I've got about sorting out some duplicate content issues. To simplify the question, imagine there is a website a.com which has a page a.com/newslettersignup. In addition to the a.com domain, there is also a different web address, ashortcut.com, which points to a.com/newslettersignup. ashortcut.com is the web address that is advertised in marketing material etc. So what is the best way then to tell Google etc. that ashortcut.com is the preferred URL for the page which sits at a.com/newslettersignup? The advice I've read about the canonical tag, for example, doesn't cover this exact scenario so although it can support cross-domain information, I'm not sure if that's the best route to follow. Thanks!
On-Page Optimization | | Nobody15755058948220 -
I've just manually edited all the page titles and meta descriptions on a site, when will this show in Google results?
I've just manually edited all of the page titles, meta descriptions and optimised the copy on a client's site. I submitted this for a new crawl on Google via Webmaster Tools but when I do a Google search the old versions are still showing. Will it still take a few weeks for the new versions to show even though Google has crawled it via Webmaster?
On-Page Optimization | | aoifep0 -
Title Tag: Phrases vs. Keywords Separated by "|"
Hello, One of my client's old sites has all category titles of the form (for example) running shoes | running shoe | walking shoes | walking shoe including many that perform well with over 60 characters. I'm in the process of rewriting the titles into something like Running and Walking Shoes, A quality shoe at OurShoes.com The reason I'm rewriting them is for future google penalties, and to look better to possible guest post opportunities. Also to look better in the SERPS But the old style is performing very well. What are the real pros and cons of each? Thanks.
On-Page Optimization | | BobGW0 -
Moving Top rank Page urls off my Home page and nesting them on one page? Good idea?
I am basically trying to cut down the amount of links on my home page to make it less eye boggling and move stuff around. So i have of my Urls on my home page that lead to pages that rank very well within google. My questions is can i remove those urls to a separate page to group them together and then showcase that one link to that page on my home page. Is that a good idea or i am going to loose my link juice and position in search? The physical urls on those pages wont change at all.
On-Page Optimization | | Dante130 -
Crawl Diagnostics - Duplicate Content and Duplicate Page Title Errors
I am getting a lot of duplicate content and duplicate page title errors from my crawl analysis. I using volusion and it looks like the photo gallery is causing the duplicate content errors. both are sitting at 231, this shows I have done something wrong... Example URL: Duplicate Page Content http://www.racquetsource.com/PhotoGallery.asp?ProductCode=001.KA601 Duplicate Page Title http://www.racquetsource.com/PhotoGallery.asp?ProductCode=001.KA601 Would anyone know how to properly disallow this? Would this be as simple as a robots.txt entry or something a little more involved within volusion? Any help is appreicated. Cheers Geoff B. (a.k.a) newbie.
On-Page Optimization | | GeoffBatterham0