Is having an identical title, h1 and url considered "over optimization"? Is it better to vary?
-
To get some new pages out without over-thinking things, I decided to line up the title tag, h1 tag and URLs of my pages exactly. They are dynamically generated based on the content the user is viewing (internal search results pages)
They're not ranking very well at the moment, but there are a number of factors that are likely to blame.
But, in particular, does anyone know if varying the text in these elements tends to perform better vs. having them all identical? Has there been any information from Google about this? Most if not all of the "over optimization" content I have seen online pertains to backlinks, not on-page content.
It's easy to say, "test it!" And of course, that's just what I'm planning to do.
But I thought I would leverage the combined knowledge of this forum to see what information I could obtain first, so I can do some informed testing, as tests can take a while to see results.
Thanks
-
PS - We are indexed, just not ranking as well as we'd like
-
Hi,
Thanks for response
I get that, except that our top competitors are doing a-ok with their SRPs...
Maybe our SRPs look somehow more SERP-y than theirs do?
-
Often, the search engines prefer to not index search results, so that's something to consider as well.
-
Ok, thanks for that note regarding CMSs.
-
ntcma,
No need to worry about that. CMSs often construct pages like this by default and generally, I would call it a best practice. Just be sure the content on your pages is substantial and that it differs substantially from content on each of your other pages.
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 Google considers the cached content of a page if it's redirected to new page?
Hi all, If we redirect an old page to some new page, we know that content relevancy between source page and this new page matters at Google. I just wonder if Google is looking at the content relevancy of old page (from cache) and new page too. Thanks
Algorithm Updates | | vtmoz0 -
Different versions of keywords. Which one to optimize?
For some keywords, we have slightly different versions available. For example: people search for 'webhosting', but also for 'web hosting'. Same for 'cloudserver' and 'cloud server'. I used google trends to compare the keywords and find the more popular one. But in different countries, different keywords are searched more often. So we can't really optimize for the BEST version of the keyword, since there is no real BEST version. What would you suggest to do? We could also just develop pages for both keywords, but that could end in duplicated content. Would be an option to use canonicalization then, but this would not really improve ranking for one of the versions. I'm very confused. If anyone has a good idea on how to optimize here, please let me know. Thank you in advance! Best regards
Algorithm Updates | | hosttech_ch
Klemens1 -
Link reclamation and many 301 redirect to one URL
We have many incoming links to a non existing pages of a sub-domain, which we are planning to take down or redirect to a sub-directory. But we are not ready to loose pagerank or link juice as many links of this sub-domain are referred from different external links. It's going to be double redirect obviously. What is the best thing we can go to reclaim these links without loss of link juice or PR? Can we redirect all these links to same sub-domain and redirect the same sub-domain to sub-directory? Will this double redirect works? Or Can we redirect all these links to same sub-domain and ask visitors to visit sub-directory, manual redirection? How fair to manually redirect visitors? Any other options? Thanks, Satish
Algorithm Updates | | vtmoz0 -
How Do I Optimize with Google's Video Search?
Hi everyone, I am looking here https://developers.google.com/webmasters/videosearch/schema and I don't fully understand. Could someone please explain, step by step, what I have to do to optimize for Google video search? I.e. Step 1 do this Step 2 do this. I don't fully understand Thank you!
Algorithm Updates | | jhinchcliffe0 -
Regarding site url structure
OK so there are already some answers to questions similar to this but mine might be a little more specific. OK website is www.bestlifeint.com Most of our product pages are as such: http://www.bestlifeint.com/products-soy.html for instance. However I was trying to help the SEO for certain pages (namely two) with the URL's and had some success with another page our Soy Meal Replacement I changed the site URL of this page from www.bestlifeint.com/products-meal to www.bestlifeint.com/Soy-Amazing-Meal-Replacement-with-Omega-3s.html (notice I dropped the /product part of url and made it more seo friendly. The old page for this page was something like www.bestlifeint.com/products-meal The issue is that recently this new page and another page I have changed http://www.bestlifeint.com/Whey-Milk-Alternative.html I have dropped the "/product" on the URL even though they are both products. The new Meal Replacement page used to be ranked like 6th on google at the begining of the month and now is like 48th or something. The new "whey milk" page (http://www.bestlifeint.com/Whey-Milk-Alternative.html) is ranked like 45th or something for "Whey Milk" when the old page...."products/wheyrice.html" was ranked around 18th or so at the begining of the month. Have I hurt these two pages by not following www.bestlifeint.com/product.... site structure? And focusing more on the URL SEO? I have both NEW pages receiving all link juice inside web site so they are the new pages (can not go to old page) and recently seeing that google has pretty much dropped the old pages in search rankings I have deleted these two pages. Do i just need to just wait and see? According to my research we should rank much higher for "Whey Milk" we should be on the first page according to googles own statements of searchers finding good relevant material. Any advice moving forward? Thanks, Brian
Algorithm Updates | | SammisBest0 -
Title tag consistency. Is it worth it?
I operate a stain removal website and was wondering how consistent it was worth being from title tag to title tag. To give you an example, here is a group of keyword phrases that I might wish to target: "getting out pet stains with vinegar" "how do I remove water stains from wood" "removing chocolate stains" Does the benefit to be gained (whatever that might be) from making these consistently of the form "how to remove X from Y, " or "how to remove X" outweigh simply giving articles titles based on the exact phrases above? I heard from someone that Google is getting more proficient at spotting "clumsy" title tags, although I'm not sure if any of the above examples would fall into that category, and was thinking that I should then probably proceed on the basis of directly titling articles based on the exact keywords I am uncovering... Any advice much appreciated.
Algorithm Updates | | ZakGottlieb710 -
What is considered duplicate content in an ecommerce website that offers the same product for retail and wholesale purchasing?
I have an ecommerce website that offers retail and wholesale products which are identical, of course with the exception of pricing. My concern is duplicate content. If the same product is offered under both the retail and wholesale category, and described identically, with the exception of price, metadata and a few words, is that considered duplicate content and would both pages be disregarded by the robots? Is it best to avoid the same description for that one product under the two separate categories? Thanks for all your help!
Algorithm Updates | | flaca0 -
"Revisit-after" Metatag = Why use it?
Hi Mozfans, Just been thinking about the robots revisit metatag, all pages on my website (200+ pages) have the following tag on them; name="revisit-after" content="7 days" /> I'm wondering what is the purpose of the tag? Surely isn't it best to allow robots (such as Googlebot or Bingbot) to crawl your site as often as possible so the index and rankings get updated as quickly as possible? Thanks in advance everyone! Ash
Algorithm Updates | | AshSEO20110