Page Title restructuring
-
Hey Mozers!
Surely you have noticed Google has been randomly restructuring our Page Titles to emphasize branding by placing the company/brand first, as opposed to after the "|" - a convention we had been accustomed to.
I am wondering if the aforementioned warrants restructuring our client's (where branding is important) Page Titles as per Google's lead, or simply staying on the sidelines for now and letting Google do it?
Anyone care to share their take on this?
Thanks!
Dino
-
First, Google doesn't do this for an entire site, at any given time, so it's best you take the time to work on client sites/pages and optimize the TITLES and DESCRIPTION you want to use. If Google uses /or changes anything for pages you have written descriptions, titles or page content, they won't advise you either.
Google's updates of these page titles, is very common when they feel the title they use for the SERP index to be more useful or accurate of the page's content. Watch for very long titles, as they are more prone to being identified by them, and rewritten
Yes, it can be quite frustrating, but it's not a total loss when working on sites.
Even if Google does change something, you can still make changes to the client site pages that might have been rewritten by Google, and hope that your new updated page info is taken over the Google TITLE rewrite..
This was a good post on BLOG. SEOmofo had a really good posting as well about this very topic.
Barry had a small but good to the point post on Google Title Rewrites at SE Round Table too
Hope some of this helps point you in the right direction!
Cheers,
-
Dino,
I would check out this QA string as it covers exactly what you are concerned about:http://moz.com/community/q/page-title-structure
I would definitely check out the SEO cheat sheet they references in the string.
Ron
-
I haven't noticed this on the sites that I manage. The only time I've had Google construct a title has been when the title we wrote was too long. I have seen many instances where Google is extracting an excerpt from the "description" as market up with Structured Data instead of using the meta description we have written. I find this frustrating because we have recently spent a good amount of time optimizing our meta descriptions and now, the majority of the time, Google seems to be favoring what we've marked up with structured data.
Have you examined your titles to see if perhaps there is a reason that Google is doing this? Could it be an idosyncracy of your CMS perhaps, or if not, could it be that something was programmed internally to insert the brand at the front of the tag programmatically? Just some thoughts!
Dana
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
-
In 2016, should all businesses have a Facebook page?
Even a couple of years ago, I would have told people that they don't _need _a Facebook page for their business if they don't plan on posting regularly and don't expect many Likes. In 2016, has this changed? Is it weird now for a business not to have a Facebook page, even if it's not particularly active? Is it just widely expected now for every business to have a Facebook page? Even if it's just used for brand awareness/visibility or as a popular directory listing simply to occupy more results on the first page for a branded search?
Branding | | Ria_2 -
Domain authority vs indexed pages
Hello, There are many articles and from our personal experience we can say that you can rank a page without backlinks with high DA but we cant figure out if DA of domain help to rank as the link juice ( so the link juice going from home page thru all pages to specific page) or it will rank a page even if its not linked in any way from homepage or any other pages and even if it not linked in any way from other pages and still ranks just because of high DA, does that DA value will spread even above all indexed pages if you have lets say 100,000 pages, i mean if domain has 100 indexed pages and DA of 50 and another domain has 100,000 and DA of 100, if both pages are the same on those domains and have no backlinks to it from my understanding page on domain with 100 indexed pages and DA of 50 suppose to rank higher ? Please share what you think
Branding | | maxdelop0 -
Pages with High Priority Issues 404 Errors
Hi there, I need some help on how to go about fixing the many 404 errors that i have on the site http://goo.gl/arwlON Many of the 404 errors are images that were on the CDN and now i have not joking 6k 404 errors and a good percentage are the cdn images that I deleted of 3 years work as I did not need them. Would you guys/gals be able to help me on best solution to fixing them? Thank you for your help in advance.
Branding | | blinky510 -
Google Plus for Businesses - Should I add users to Company's Circles (branded page)?
Hi All, I know (or think I know) that one of the easiest ways to gain followers for my brand on G plus is to add people to our company's circles. Naturally, they often add you back. However, what does it mean to people who watch my brand (my G Plus page), the fact that I'm following thousands of people? Should I do it? How does it reflect on us?
Branding | | BeytzNet
Is there a better way to gain followers (specifically for G Plus)? P.S
We obviously have the badge on site but we hardly gain followers that way. Thanks0 -
Why has Google started to re-write my page titles?
Since earlier this week I've noticed that Google has started to re-write several of our page titles and I'm not entirely sure why - does anyone have any info? We are a UK business and currently have top spot for the keyword 'toilet cubicles' - however, our index.html page title has changed as follows: FROM: Toilet Cubicles | WC Panel Systems for Washrooms | Cubicle Centre TO: Cubicle Centre: Toilet Cubicles | WC Panel Systems for Washrooms Is this Google favouring a more brand-led approach to search? Be interesting to hear everyone's thoughts... Cheers, Craig.
Branding | | cubicle_Craig0 -
On the "new" YouTube" layout how can I select the correct Facebook page to connect to when my Facebook account has multiple business pages attached to it?
On the "new" YouTube" layout how can I select the correct Facebook page to connect to when my Facebook account has multiple business pages attached to it? My Facebook account has three business pages and the "base" user profile. I am trying to connect one of the business pages to a YouTube channel but each time I attempt to do this YouTube selects the "base" user profile and I cannot determine how to switch it to the correct business page. I attempted to connect while signed in "as the page" but it would not allow that. Thanks for any help!
Branding | | KentuckyOne0 -
One Page desapeared from Google results over the weekend.
Has anyone had this happen? My page (just one page) is gone from the search results. Not only did we lose our position in Google (we were #9) now the entire page is completely gone from Google index. However, It is on the first page of Bing and Yahoo. We did have our server down from Friday to Monday. I went into Google webmaster tools on Monday and saw a big X next to sitemap. It said HTTP Error 404 detected on August 21, 2011. So Google went in on Sunday and came up with the error. But why only one page is missing and all the other pages still show up? I was thinking that page was blacklisted by Google but when I went to Webmaster Tools to listen to "Requesting reconsideration of your site" video all they talk about is the "site" being blacklisted not a particular page. Any one has any ideas?
Branding | | DmitryP0 -
Company name in TITLE tag first have an impact on user behavior?
Does anyone know if there any sort of study or have an opinion on the following: Does the company name appearing the browser tab have any affect on how a user interacts with a site from a branding perspective or a TITLE tag / meta description in SERP "paying off" perspective? That is, optimizing titles COMPANY NAME | KEYWORD instead of vice versa so that when the title shows in the browser tab, the company name is displayed but not much else.
Branding | | hunchfree0