Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
Unique page URLs and SEO titles
-
www.heartwavemedia.com / Wordpress / All in One SEO pack
I understand Google values unique titles and content but I'm unclear as to the difference between changing the page url slug and the seo title.
For example:
I have an about page with the url "www.heartwavemedia.com/about" and the SEO title San Francisco Video Production | Heartwave Media | About
I've noticed some of my competitors using url structures more like "www.competitor.com/san-francisco-video-production-about"
Would it be wise to follow their lead? Will my landing page rank higher if each subsequent page uses similar keyword packed, long tail url? Or is that considered black hat?
If advisable, would a url structure that includes "san-francisco-video-production-_____" be seen as being to similar even if it varies by one word at the end?
Furthermore, will I be penalized for using similar SEO descriptions ie. "San Francisco Video Production | Heartwave Media | Portfolio" and San Francisco Video Production | Heartwave Media | Contact" or is the difference of one word "portfolio" and "contact" sufficient to read as unique?
Finally...am I making any sense? Any and all thoughts appreciated...
-
Have you tried tools such as pingdom, page speed insights or yslow? These can all give you a good idea where to start.
-
I'd more than likely go for something different on each page. Make sure you're describing the page content accurately in the title.
You don't need to include your brand in any of the titles. Some people believe it's better to have the brand name, some don't. Amazon for example - they're a strong, well known brand - so it makes sense to include the brand name as it can encourage click throughs from Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs). For a business like yours I wouldn't think it'd make a big difference either way. As you're targeting local customers, it could result in extra exposure for your brand name if you include it, though the longer a title tag the less emphasis is given to each keyword in the SERPs - so that's a small reason not to include it. If you go back to what I said about thinking about the user, then you'd have the brand name on the homepage and about page for definite, but other pages - it probably doesn't matter so much. As you noticed on another thread, sometimes Google will add your brand name anyway! You could also consider how people's bookmarks display, but again I'll say - don't worry about this too much!
In terms of your question about speed, there are a few resources you can put your URLs into that will give you feedback and recommendations. Here are 2:
tools.pingdom.com/fpt/
http://developers.google.com/speed/pagespeed/insights/ -
Thanks, Alex. Yeah, my instinct was that the keyword packed urls were spammy so I'll keep them simple.
I feel like I'm beginning to wrap my head around this. So to clarify further...
If I'm trying to get my home page to rank for "San Francisco Video Production" should I not include that phrase at all in my title tags or is it still advisable providing it varies slightly and clearly relates the intended purpose of the page?
For example:
San Francisco Video Production Portfolio | Heartwave Media
or would it make more sense to let that term be exclusive to the home page and do something more like:
Corporate and Commercial Video Portfolio | Heartwave Media
Right now I have:
San Francisco Video Production | Portfolio | Heartwave Media
PS:
Do I even need to include my brand in the titles outside the landing page?
-
How can I make my page load faster. I believe it's a bit slow...
-
"I have an about page with the url "www.heartwavemedia.com/about" and the SEO title San Francisco Video Production | Heartwave Media | About"
I'd say the URL you have already is perfect. For the "SEO title" (title tag) I'd go with "About Heartwave Media" - the unique part of the title tag should be at the start.
Think about what is best for the human visitors to your website, and not the search engine crawlers. People expect an "about" url to be at www.example.com/about or www.example.com/aboutus - it's also memorable and easier to type in. I've always said this is the best way, and Google is getting smarter at ranking content that is useful for searchers: http://moz.com/blog/be-the-result-that-google-wants-to-rank
If every URL on your page had "san-francisco-video-production-" in it, it's not user-friendly, and it looks spammy, so to Google it's definitely going to look spammy, either now or at some point in the future.
Also be aware of keyword cannibilisation. You want search engines to know your website is about video production, but you don't want to confuse them over which page they should rank highest. This is an old article but still relevant: http://moz.com/blog/how-to-solve-keyword-cannibalization It's fine to mention "video production" and variations of that theme throughout your website, but be aware of the cannibilisation issue. If you think it's most important to rank for "San Francisco Video Production" then that should be your homepage title, arguably with your brand name at the end.
-
Hey Keith,
Let's discuss things one by one
1. Title Tags
- Too long! It must be around 60 Characters with spaces (Some Suggests 70 as well). So, try to fix it
- Be unique for every page. Like for About Page, you can use "About | San Francisco's Leading Video Production Company". For Services "Video Production Services San Francisco". Search more keywords for your business (Google Keywords Tool)
- Use your brand as blog title. Using keyword is not very recommended as it leads to increase length and over -optimization
2. Meta Description
- Unique description of around 160 words with proper optimization of keywords is ideal
- Your Meta descriptions are not optimized at moment. Please optimize them
3. URL Structure
- Optimized URL is not all about placing keywords in URL
- Deliver authority to your pages and they will start to rank
I hop this will help!
Regards
-
I've already crawled the site. Quite a few titles appear to be rather long. Most of the titles use San Francisco Video Production.
Only include the keyword in the title if that's what the page is about. Having a keyword in the slug is a good idea, again just don't go overboard. One page should suffice, but that alone won't guarantee the first page (No one and nothing guarantees first page results).
You have to look at domain age as well. Does one of your competitors have a couple of years on you? Do they have ten years on you? That's a big thing.
Where are you're competitors getting links? Are these links good, will they drive traffic? That's another concern.
I like to put page speed/usability in the first order, but many people say it's second order. Does your site load well/fast? What can you do to reduce page load speed?
These are some really basic things you have to consider. If you've answered them properly, your situation should improve.
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
-
What is the best strategy to SEO Discontinued Products on Ecommerce Sites?
RebelsMarket.com is a marketplace for alternative fashion. We have hundreds of sellers who have listed thousands of products. Over 90% of the items do not generate any sales; and about 40% of the products have been on the website for over 3+ years. We want to cleanup the catalog and remove all the old listings that older than 2years that do not generate any sales. What is the best practice for removing thousands of listings an Ecommerce site? do we 404 these products and show similar items? Your help and thoughts is much appreciated.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | JimJ3 -
Is this campaign of spammy links to non-existent pages damaging my site?
My site is built in Wordpress. Somebody has built spammy pharma links to hundreds of non-existent pages. I don't know whether this was inspired by malice or an attempt to inject spammy content. Many of the non-existent pages have the suffix .pptx. These now all return 403s. Example: https://www.101holidays.co.uk/tazalis-10mg.pptx A smaller number of spammy links point to regular non-existent URLs (not ending in .pptx). These are given 302s by Wordpress to my homepage. I've disavowed all domains linking to these URLs. I have not had a manual action or seen a dramatic fall in Google rankings or traffic. The campaign of spammy links appears to be historical and not ongoing. Questions: 1. Do you think these links could be damaging search performance? If so, what can be done? Disavowing each linking domain would be a huge task. 2. Is 403 the best response? Would 404 be better? 3. Any other thoughts or suggestions? Thank you for taking the time to read and consider this question. Mark
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | MarkHodson0 -
URL Masking or Cloaking?
Hi Guy's, On our webshop we link from our menu to categories were we want to rank on in Google. Because the menu is sitewide i guess Google finds the categories in the menu important and meaby let them score better (onside links) The problem that i'm facing with is that we make difference in Gender. In the menu we have: Man and Woman. Links from the menu go to: /categorie?gender=1/ and /category?gender=2/. But we don't want to score on gender but on the default URL. For example: Focus keyword = Shoes Menu Man link: /shoes?gender=1 Menu Woman link: /shoes?gender=2 But we only want to rank on /shoes/. But that URL is not placed in the menu. Every URL with: "?" has a follow noindex. So i was thinking to make a link in the menu, on man and woman: /shoes/, but on mouse down (program it that way) ?=gender. Is this cloaking for Google? What we also could do is make a canonical to the /shoes/ page. But i don't know if we get intern linking value on ?gender pages that have a canonical. Hope it makes senses 🙂 Advises are also welcome, such as: Place al the default URL's in the footer.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Happy-SEO0 -
Pages mirrored on unknown websites (not just content, all the HTML)... blackhat I've never seen before.
Someone more expert than me could help... I am not a pro, just doing research on a website... Google Search Console shows many backlinks in pages under unknown domains... this pages are mirroring the pages of the linked website... clicking on a link on the mirror page leads to a spam page with link spam... The homepage of these unknown domain appear just fine... looks like that the domain is partially hijacked... WTF?! Have you ever seen something likes this? Can it be an outcome of a previous blackhat activity?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | 2mlab0 -
Best Location to find High Page Authority/ Domain Authority Expired Domains?
Hi, I've been looking online for the best locations to purchase expired domains with existing Page Authority/ Domain Authority attached to them. So far I've found: http://www.expireddomains.net
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | VelasquezEF
http://www.domainauthoritylinks.com
http://moonsy.com/expired_domains/ These site's are great but I'm wondering if I'm potentially missing other locations? Any other recommendations? Thanks.1 -
Noindexing Thin Content Pages: Good or Bad?
If you have massive pages with super thin content (such as pagination pages) and you noindex them, once they are removed from googles index (and if these pages aren't viewable to the user and/or don't get any traffic) is it smart to completely remove them (404?) or is there any valid reason that they should be kept? If you noindex them, should you keep all URLs in the sitemap so that google will recrawl and notice the noindex tag? If you noindex them, and then remove the sitemap, can Google still recrawl and recognize the noindex tag on their own?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | WebServiceConsulting.com0 -
Can a Page Title be all UPPER CASE?
My clients wants to use UPPER CASE for all his page titles. Is this okay? Does Google react badly to this?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | petewinter0