Starting every page title with the keyword
-
I've read everywhere that it's vital to get your target keyword to the front of the title that you're writing up.
Taking into account that Google likes things looking natural I wanted to check if my writing title's like this for example:
"Photographers Miami- Find the right Equipment and Accessories"
..Repeated for every page (maybe a page on photography in miami, one on videography in Orlando etc) is a smart way to write titles or if by clearly stacking keywords at the front of every title won't be as beneficial as other ways of doing it?
-
Best practice is great starting point, but you need to work out what works for your audience, your offerings and your business.
For instance, having a call to action in your title can make a positive difference ("find" is a bit generic, but things like save, download the guide, buy now, etc can work, if it connects with the searchers intent.)
Luckily page titles are pretty easy to test - you'll need to keep an eye on your rankings and traffic and measure click-throughs for a suitable period depending on the search volume and taking into account any seasonality etc. As well as the traffic you receive, also look at the conversion rate too - especially important if you're testing for intent.
You can always tried a couple of variations in Adwords to see how they perform, especially for you more important keywords / pages.
The approach you take regarding your titles also depends on the type of page, the nature of the business, your specific business goals, the strength of your brand etc.
Take a good look at the other sites appearing in the SERPS and the titles/descriptions they're using. Put yourself in the place of your audience and try to see what's going to work and what isn't and how you might be able to differentiate your page from the rest.
Also remember that titles have to work in conjunction with the description. While the description isn't used for ranking, it can take some of the load of the title when it comes to supporting click-throughs.
Another point to consider is that Titles aren't just used in search engine results, but also when the page is shared / linked to etc. Depending on your site, you may want to adopt a slightly different strategy for your blog content than you use on a product catalogue for instance.
-
Hey Doug,
For the record my scenario doesn't have anything to do with photography or Orlando, but the relevance behind your advice still completely rings true. While I doing title and meta planning I'm trying to focus on designing it all to be engaging for users while still applying the right mechanics.
I read something earlier today from Yoast:
"Write proper page titles. Not overly optimized titles targeting a gazillion keywords. No. Proper, one sentence titles that contain your brand name and your focus keyword. It’s not hard, just do it. And for your homepage your title should probably start with your brand name, 50% of the emails we get is about homepages where people have ridiculously optimized titles instead of just the name of their company."
My take on this is that writing title's (at least partially) as sentences is the way to go according to the advice. I also read today someone saying to have keywords in the title and description wrapped with other words.
However Dana's advice above, not to mention researching through a decent whack SERPs today seems to suggest that a format like: business name- keyword ..etc gets results.
Do you have any take on this Doug?
-
While you obviously want to get your keywords into your title, and the general wisdom is the nearer the front, the better but it's not the whole story.
As well as optimising your titles for keyword relevancy/rankings you should also consider optimising for click-through.
The page title and the description used in the snippet in the search results are likely to be the first thing your visitors/customers are likely to see and if nobody is clicking on your entry in the search results it doesn't matter where you rank.
Think of your snippet as a small-ad or adwords snippet. It's got to provide a compelling reason for someone to click on your link. Can you find a way to differentiate yourself from your competitors and stand out? Can you do anything to give people confidence that they're going to find what they are after if they click on your link.
A well written title can punch above it's weight in the search results. (Like wise, a bad , un-engaging or spammy looking title can undermine your efforts.)
Also remember that your page may also rank for keywords that you're not optimising for, these may be long tail keywords with higher intent than the more generic keywords so make sure you look at the keywords sending traffic to each landing page (even low volumes) and look for themes/topics/intent you can optimise your pages around.
If you're targeting multiple locations (Photographers miami and photographers orlando for instance) then you'll need to make sure you avoid duplicate/thin content. How can you make these pages relevant to that location...
Think about the intent and commerciality when considering your keywords. If I'm searching for "photographers in orlando" am I looking for camera equipment or am I more likely to be looking for a photographer to take my picture and if this is the case - why would I want to buy any camera equipment!
-
Dana that's super helpful, thanks for the extra info on trimming up the tail end
-
If you are starting every page title with "Photographers Miami" then I think that's probably not the best because you'll be trying to target the same keywords with every page. If, on the other hand your page titles look more like this:
Photopgrahers Miami | Cameras & Accessories
Photopgrahers Orlando | Cameras & Accessories
I think these are perfectly fine. You might notice that exchanged the word "equipment" with "cameras.: Equipment could mean anything. I assume you are selling cameras, so why not say so? Also I removed the word "Find." Save your call to action for your Meta description. That word "Find" is not helping your title at all. However, it's perfect for a meta description.
Those are my thoughts. I hope they help!
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
-
Canonical tag On Each Page With Same Page URL - Its Harmful For SEO or Not?
Hi. I have an e-commerce project and they have canonical code in each and every page for it's own URL. (Canonical on Original Page No duplicate page) The url of my wesite is like this: "https://www.website.com/products/produt1"
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | HuptechWebseo
and the site is having canonical code like this: " This is occurring in each and every products as well as every pages of my website. Now, my question is that "is it harmful for the SEO?" Or "should I remove this tags from all pages?" Is that any benefit for using the canonical tag for the same URL (Original URL)?0 -
Redirecting 86'd Brand Product Category Page
What would be the approach if my website is no longer selling products for a brand that is driving top organic traffic? Where should I redirect the traffic on the page? I'm trying to decide between the homepage or another similar brand product page.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | JMSCC0 -
More pages is good for SEO? Is this true?
Hi Guys I have a question, I was told the more pages I have the better for SEO, Is this true?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | edward-may0 -
SEO for Career sites and sup-pages
For main job categories: We manage several career pages for several clients but the competition for the main keywords (even several long tail) is from big names like Indeed and similar job boards?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | rflores
What would you recommend? For job posts: Since the job posts that our clients post are short lived (80% live less than a month) would it still be incorrect to purchase backlinks? or is it always a big no Thanks for your help. And if a similar question has been asked I would appreciate if you could point me to it. I could not find one.0 -
Is it a good idea to target a similar versions of a keyword?
Salute you all, I am optimizing a site for an attorney. I have done some good research and find the keyword difficulties. Some of my keywords are very similar was wondering is this a good idea and safe (white hat) or not? e.g. page title: 1) city immigration lawyer 2) city immigration attorney My main and first reason is to target all users. Since some will search under 'attorney' and some under 'Lawyer'. Secondly one is easier than the other. I appreciate any input from more experienced seo experts. Chris 🙂
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Chris-tx0 -
Page 1 Ranking - Disappeared!
Hi All We launched our client's website http://rollerbannerscheap.co.uk in January this year. We have been building links making sure we are not over optmising anchor text and only following ethical SEO tactics. Our client's site eventually hit page 1 for it's main key word 'Roller Banner' 1 week ago, the site received impressions/clicks from the SERPS and has started to gain traffic from that particular keyword. I have checked today, and I cannot our client's website URL within the first 10 pages of Google, nevermind on page 1. Our client is currently undercutting competitiors on price, which we stated (the price) in the meta tag. Is it possible other SEOs could de-rank our website? If not, what would be a likely explaination for this occurance? Would just like to add, I recently build a link with anchor text 'Roller Banner Website, but one of my older links uses anchor text 'Roller Banners Cheap Website' - They're not exact match, but could this affect our ranking? Awaiting help Lewis
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | SO_UK0 -
One Blog Comment Now on Many Pages of The Same Domain
My question is I blog commented on this site http://blogirature.com/2012/07/01/half-of-200-signals-in-googles-ranking-algorithm-revealed/#comment-272 under the name "Peter Rota". For some reason the recent comments is a site wide link so, bascially my link from my website is pretty much on each page of their site now. I also noticed that the anchor text for each one of my links says "Peter Rota". This is my concern will google think its spammy if im on a lot of pages on a same site for one blog comment, and will I be penailzied for the exact same anchor text on each page? If this is the case what could I do in trying to get the links removed? thanks
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | ilyaelbert0 -
Am I Being Penalized For Having My Whole Site In A Subfolder Named With A Keyword?
I inherited a client. For some reason, their previous webmaster set up the site so everything is in a subfolder /law/. It's an attorney website. All the urls have the primary domain name /law/ and then assigned url. I can't image this is helping but could the site be penalized for this by Google or Bing? It's set up like this: www.attorneysite.com**/law/**therestoftheurl /law/ is included in EVERY PAGE... even the homepage.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | DeltonChilds0