Regarding Google Title 'Width' and changing Meta Titles w/o Penalty?
-
A vast majority of pages on my site are now too wide (the character count was fine prior to the March update).
I want to go through and update them so they display properly and are not too wide.However, I am concerned, as my understanding was that changing Meta Titles is dangerous and can have a negative effect on your rankings and can cause real issues. Is this an opportunity to change my Titles all-together without any kind of penalty? Or can I only trim the end part?
In summary:
1. Can I edit all of my Meta Titles without affecting my rankings?
2. If no, how do I edit them properly to fit within the proper width and not cause any issues?
3. If yes, I can go through and change all my Meta Titles to whatever extent and optimize them to reflect latest best practices? There are changes I wanted to make to all my meta titles but I've been afraid to... due to fear of rankings drops etc
Any help with this would be greatly appreciated
-
There's no one-sized-fits-all answer to this, I'm afraid. Any large-scale change to a site carries risk, and could even look like over-optimization. Even if it's a great, high-quality change, Google may re-evaluate the site, and you could easily see short-term ranking fluctuations. Long-term, you very well might improve, but there is definitely short-term risk.
As Kevin said, my recent post explains the new width guidelines - it's not as simple as one number. I also don't think that falling outside of these guidelines is the kiss of death. It could impact CTR and I wouldn't make a habit of it, but some titles are just naturally longer than others.
It really depends on what the before and after look like, how big your site is, how authoritative your site is, and a lot of things that are hard to dig into on a Public Q&A. Personally, I'd say test it - pick the pages where the change has the most value and the current titles are long and try changing a group of them. See how it goes. Doing it in phases and measuring can help you get a better handle on things and even help you tweak the changes as you see what works and what doesn't.
-
Dr. Pete had a great blog post on it: http://moz.com/blog/new-title-tag-guidelines-preview-tool
Bottom Line - Write compelling titles (that reflect the landing page) for your audience within the constraints presented in Dr. Pete's blog.
-
You won't get a penalty from changing them, however a rankings drop is entirely possible. Try to keep your main keywords in each title and you should be fine.
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
-
Ranking dropped after change single page url, should I change it back?
I was making updates to the content on the following page, and a few days later dropped from #2 SERP ranking to 50+. Things I checked: Yes, 301 redirect was implemented right away. After publishing, I manually requested indexing in search console. Right after publishing I re-submitted the sitemap manually and Google said they had not crawled it in 9 days. My question: should I change the URL back to the old one, or give it a little more time (especially since I re-submitted sitemap) Original URL: https://www.travelinsurancereview.net/plans/travel-medical/ New URL: https://www.travelinsurancereview.net/plans/travel-medical-insurance/
On-Page Optimization | | DamianTysdal0 -
Impact of keyword/keyphrases density on header/footer
Hi, It might be a stupid question but I prefer to clear things out if it's not a problem: Today I've seen a website where visitors are prompted no less than 5 times per page to "call [their] consultants".
On-Page Optimization | | GhillC
This appears twice on the header, once on the side bar (mouse over pop up), once in the body of most of the pages and once in the footer. So obviously, besides the body of the pages, it appears at least 4 times on every single pages as it's part of the website template. In the past, I never really wondered re the menu, the footer etc as it's usually not hammering the same stuff repeatedly everywhere. Anyway, I then had a look at their blog and, given the average length of their articles, the keyword density around these prompts is about 0.5% to 0.8% for each page. This is huge! So basically my question is as follow: is Google's algorithm smart enough to understand what this is and make abstraction of this "content" to focus on the body of the pages (probably simply focusing on the tags)? Or does it send wrong signals and confuse search engine more than anything else? Reading stuff such as this, I wonder how does it work when this is not navigational or links elements. Thanks,
G Note: I’m purposely not speaking about the UX which is obviously impacted by such a hammering process.0 -
Titles and User Intent
Hi all, Just a question re: Titles. Does adding terms like "buy online" to the title for ecommerce websites change the way Google ranks you? For example: Blue Flowers | Flower Palace Buy Blue Flowers Online | Flower Palace Would the second title appear higher for people in the buying phase of the sales funnel, and lower for people in the research phase of the buying funnel? Or will it not matter?
On-Page Optimization | | Onlineorders0 -
How can you activate the 'Results From' internal search bar on Google SERP?
Hi There, I am hoping someone can advise me on getting the 'Results From' sitelink to display for my site on the Google SERP? I have searched far and wide for the answer with no luck. I'd really appreciate your advice. Thanks! Internal_Search_Google_SERP_zps75a5383e.jpg
On-Page Optimization | | tmg.seo0 -
Hiding Legitimate Content From Google Without Penalty?
Hi Around the time of the April/May 2012 penguin update we lost around 40% of traffic and ever since traffic has slowly been reduced to around 50% of what is was from last year from approx 1000 hits a day to under 500. I'm not convinced totally that penguin is to blame as link building has not been overdone especially when other companies who rank first page for "personalised gifts" have 100's of anchor links pointing back to there sites with this term as the link. I think our site may be hit due to accidental keyword stuffing! Basically when an order is placed the product page is updated with the last message to be engraved on the item, so for example if someone buys 10 wine glasses all personalised with "happy birthday mum, happy birthday dad, happy birthday son etc or if customers choose similar engraving then we have lots of combinations of the same words repeated. This information has increased the number of conversions as it gives customers ideas as what to engrave and I don't really want to remove it from the page. Could anyone advise me on what i need to do, is there a way of telling google to ignore this text, a way of hiding without being penalised? Any ideas greatly appreciated!
On-Page Optimization | | SmithyWhiffy0 -
Page Title - What is better?
Hi SEO Heads, I have another question if someone would be so kind in answering What page title of the 2 below is better for SEO (i) Chocolate Cake|Chocolate Cake Recipe|Xmas Cake or (ii) Chocolate Cake | Chocolate Cake Recipe | Xmas Cake As you can see (ii) Page Title has a space before and after the | (vertical bar) I know the second page title looks better to human eyes but on some pages I had to forego the space so i could fit my keywords in the page title. is this a good idea? Can anyone help me? Cheers Aidan
On-Page Optimization | | aidanlawlor0 -
Page Title
My website was hacked last November and then again last week. Prior to the hacking we were at number one in Google.co.uk for our main search term "nile cruises' for years. After last November's hacking we dropped to about position 4 and after last week we are at position 7. Ima rebuilding the lost data and I am having to create new Title and Description meta data for each of the indexed pages. I am taking the opportunity to try and ensure my titles and descriptions are good and the correct length, etc but wondered about the best title format. I set our home page title over the weekend as: Nile Cruise | Leading ABTA & ATOL Bonded UK Nile Cruise Specialist I was going to try and cover 3 keyphrases in the title like this: Nile Cruise | Nile Cruises | Nile Cruise Bargains But I thought that might look a bit spammy because the 3 phrases are very similar. I wondered what anyone else might suggest? Thanks, Colin
On-Page Optimization | | NileCruises0 -
Methods for tracking changes?
Hi all, I'm starting to make changes to our websites this week. I need to record every change made so I can compare the affect it had on the performance/ranking of the site. I'm curious to know what methods those with more experience are using to keep track of everything. Thanks in advance.
On-Page Optimization | | Technical_Contact0