Title Tags in 2013
-
For blog posts do you think it is better to use something like "Atlanta Plumbing Company" or "Choosing an Atlanta Plumbing Company" (article title). I have been using the article titles but I think it might be hindering rankings a bit. I use to use the keyword but it seems a bit spammy now.
I want to create titles for the readers but rank well too.
Any suggestions?
Thanks!
-
Jason,
Think of how many individual blog posts you're going to need to write in 2013, 2014, and beyond (one hundred, two hundred, more?) and how much social outreach you'll have to accomplish over that time in order to build the blog into a really effective marketing tool for your company. Then you gotta wonder how you can maintain interest and focus writing all those posts on the specific subject of "atlanta plumbing company" or "choosing an atlanta plumbing company". On top of that, gotta wonder how many of those social profiles you reach out to week after week after week who are going to want to share your content on the specific subject of "atlanta plumbing company" or "choosing an atlanta plumbing company". And then you gotta wonder about the readers and how their interest will be maintained while you're writing only on the specific subject of "atlanta plumbing company" or "choosing an atlanta plumbing company".
I'd say that you're on the right path in thinking that your titles seem a bit spammy, but you've gotta get off the path and get on the highway. On the highway, your blog can reach its greater potential--a vehicle that can reach and engage a community that is hungry for a wide variety of topics within your theme.
As someone here at SEOmoz is fond of saying, content needs to be exceptional, inspirational, unique, credible, fun, and beneficial to share in order to accomplish it's goal of being an effective marketing tool. I would start with that, when contemplating your titles, and then write your posts accordingly.
-
It's really important that users find what they are looking for in that the title should be as descriptive as possible otherwise they will just bounce off the page. That said, I would try to ensure that you word your titles well for SEO by keeping irrelevant stop words to a minimum and keep your primary target keywords or phrase early in the page title
-
Hey Jason, I am glad that someone really asked this question!
Well everybody wants people to read whatever they are writing on their blog and for that one of the ways is to rank the blog well in search engines from the searchable keywords like you have mentioned in your question.
Actually the keywords that you are trying to focus is one of the money making keywords within your niche and that is why it’s more competitive than other keywords that you are not focusing. I think the better idea is create natural titles that may or may not focus keywords all the time but focus on the content on the page...and give indication to Google and users about what the page is all about...
As far as targeting keywords is concern try to focus on long tail keywords with less competition so that you blog will easily rank and get some attention and if it will really worth reading you will see people share far and wide naturally through social networks, emails and all other possible mediums.
Hope this helps!
-
Have you glanced at SEOMoz's best practices for title tags? - http://www.seomoz.org/learn-seo/title-tag
In my opinion you should have the title as natural as possible and that should be the a clear label as to what your article is about. Have you looked at examples such as how SEOMoz has titles on their blog - article title | brand
In my experience you will also pick up more long tail traffic with more natural titles such as using the full title rather than just a specific keyword. It also looks less spammy and over-optimized which is something to take into consideration after recent Google updates.
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
-
Does adding a noindex tag reduce duplicate content?
I've been working under the assumption for some time that if I have two (or more) pages which are very similar that I can add a noindex tag to the pages I don't need and that will reduce duplicate content. As far as I know this removes the pages with the tag from Google's index and stops any potential issues with duplicate content. It's the second part of that assumption that i'm now questioning. Despite pages having the noindex tag they continue to appear in Google Search console as duplicate content, soft 404 etc. That is, new pages are appearing regularly that I know to have the noindex tag. My thoughts on this so far are that Google can still crawl these pages (although won't index them) so shows them in GSC due to a crude issue flagging process. I mainly want to know: a) Is the actual Google algorithm sophisticated enough to ignore these pages even through GSC doesn't. b) How do I explain this to a client.
Technical SEO | | ChrisJFoster0 -
How similar do pages need to be to utilize the canonical tag
One of my pages is a help and questions page about completing a conversions and the other is the actual campaign landing page. They are both ranking for the same term. While the subject of both pages is similar the content is not. Is the rel canonical tag appropriate here?
Technical SEO | | cbarron0 -
Is it ok to use H1 tags in breadcrumbs?
A client has an e-commerce site and she doesn't want a page title on the products page. She has breadcrumbs though. Her website developer suggests putting the H1 on the breadcrumbs. So: products> Gifts > picture frame with h1 tags round the word "picture frame". Is this ok to do? Or is it a bad thing for SEO purposes? Thanks
Technical SEO | | AL123al0 -
Are Tags in Blogs good?
Hi Is adding tags into Blogs a good idea? Does it help with SEO at all? For example blog/?tag=/Invoicing-Software Will that help us get ranked for Invoicing Software? Regards Andrew
Technical SEO | | Studio330 -
January 2013 Google update affected my projects ?
I am running 400+ projects. Mostly all projects keyword rank has been effected recently. IS there any new update from google between 10-19 January 2013 ?
Technical SEO | | deepakwadhwa0 -
Two different canonical tags on one page
Due to an error, some of my pages now have two canonical tags on them. One is correct and the other goes to a nonsense URL (404 page). I know I should ideally remove the incorrect ones, but it's a big manual job. Are they doing any harm? Can I just leave them there and let Google figure it out? The correct ones are higher up in the code. Will this make a difference? Any help appreciated.
Technical SEO | | ShearingsGroup0 -
Understanding Duplicate Titles in Wordpress
I have duplicate title errors in Wordpress and I cannot pinpoint the problem. I have my blog set up so that the home page of the blog has the most recent posts. In my campaign report somehow the page directory is being found and I can't find any links on my blog to those pages. the errors are on pages that are like the following www.example.com/blog/page/13/ www.example.com/blog/page/14/ I am using Yoast and I thought I had it set up correctly. The other pages have the correct title and canonical tags, but he urls ending with page do not, but the page directory is duplicating the home page title. How or where can i fix this issue?
Technical SEO | | hfranz0 -
Google caching meta tags from another site?
We have several sites on the same server. On the weekend we relocated some servers, changing IP address. A client has since noticed something freaky with the meta tags. 1. They search for their companyname, and another site from the same server appears in position 1. It is completely unrelated, has never happened before, and the company name is not used in any incoming text links. Eg search for company1 on Google. Company1.com.au appears at position 2, but at position1 is school1.com.au. The words company1 don't appear anywhere on the site. I've analysed all incoming links with a gazillion tools, and can't find any link text of company1, linking to school1. 2. Even more freaky, searching for company1.com.au at Google. The results at Google in position 1 for the last three days has been: Meta Title for school1 (but hovering/clicking actual goes to URL for company1)
Technical SEO | | ozgeekmum
Meta Description for school1
URL for company1.com.au Clicking on the cached copy of result1, it shows a cached version of school1 taken on March 18. Today is 29 March. Logically we are trying to get Google to spider both sites again quickly. We've asked the clients to update their home pages. Resubmitted xml sitemaps. Checked the HTTP status codes - both are happily returning 200s. Different cookies. I found another instance on a forum: http://webmasters.stackexchange.com/questions/10578/incorrect-meta-information-in-google Any ideas?0