Difference in using dividers in TITLE TAG
-
Hi everyone, i know that dividers in title or even title tag doesnt have much of an impact on better rankings. I had great rankings for many keywords, not using dividers or using only one divider. However for better reading comprehension and usability, and also aesthetics i started to use the pipe as my main divider and other secondary dividers. I saw many pages drop in rankings vs other less competent and with less content pages. My format was as follows:
Product Brand | Product description - Additional info or local info
ie. Fiber Glass MBI | Insulation Batts for Home and Commercial use - Acoustic and Thermal Insulation
I changed the format for a handful of pages, and saw immediate results on rankings and traffic on those pages.
Product Brand with Product Description - Additional Info
ie. Fiber Glass MBI Insulation Batts for Commercial use - Acoustic and Thermal Insulation.
Does it sound like something i should implement page wide. I personally like the aesthetics of the pipe as it gives a cleaner look, but the better rankings on the changed pages with using only one divider makes me think. Does it sound familiar, or its just a coincidence,
Regards,
-
Thanks for the response and follow up. I will dig deeper as to why the better rankings and incoming traffic recently.
Regards,
-
I would say more links and new/refreshed content would definitely have more to do with it than the presence or absence of a pipe.
With a pipe the title will be slightly longer. The example titles you gave seem on the long side, but nothing longer than most in that industry.
-
As i am responsible for the page changes, i didnt do much really. Just some minor tweaks in the description page, some new content, my incoming links have been increasing slightly. But i see better results with the pages with titles with no dividers.
Maybe its a coincidence, i just thought maybe something was going on with the dividers. But it doesnt seem that way. Is there anything else i might be missing as why these pages rank better than other similar pages?
Great star trek example haha, thanks!
-
Negative, its a network solutions hosted page. With regular code.
-
I also changed the meta description tag in these pages. I did some general content maintenance, such as review the outgoing links, add some images, but nothing else.
My incoming links have been increasing since July, but ive seen better results with the pages with Title Tags with no dividers or only one divider. I need to dig deeper, as i researched that the title tag alone doesnt make much of a difference.
-
The problem with figuring out the benefit of these minute changes is that there are thousands of other changes that have occurred. Many of them are out of our control. So while you were experimenting with separators, another webmaster might have made a change that made a competing page or pages decrease. And that's just one example.
It would make for an interesting outlying case if your site/pages were positioned just so that one weird, seemingly innocuous, tweak made the difference.
If you've seen the first film in the Star Trek reboot, you might remember how Scotty figured out his transporter problem. Well, actually Future Spock just gave it to him - since Future Scotty was going to fix the problem anyway. But upon looking at the calculations, Scotty realized that space itself was also moving. Which was why his previous experiments were a disaster.
What I'm saying is, aside from 'I'm a dork', is nothing exists in a vacuum. It's very hard to determine if a tiny change had a positive benefit. There are so many external factors/moving parts. Though it would help reduce uncertainty if you didn't change anything else.
-
Was this a Wordpress blog and did you install a plugin to do these changes ?
-
Jesus,
Did you change anything else besides just inserting the pipes?
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
-
Duplicate Meta Tag error
I am getting Duplicate Meta tag error(under HTML improvement) for these kinds of pages http://www.gobol.in/catalogsearch/result/index/?category=&p=3&q=sharp+split+AC+1.5+ton&x=0&y=0 http://www.gobol.in/catalogsearch/result/index/?category=&q=sharp+split+AC+1.5+ton&special_price=4%2C10000&x=0&y=0 http://www.gobol.in/catalogsearch/result/index/?category=&q=sharp+split+AC+1.5+ton&special_price=5%2C10000_8%2C10000&x=0&y=0 What is the best way to resolve such type of error?
On-Page Optimization | | Obbserv0 -
Canonical URL Category and Tags
Hello, I would like to know that I want to use both category and tags in my blog StylishMahi. If I index both category and tags, should I use canonical URL tag to pass referring to main category. As I want more my categories in SERP results ranking higher? I have also attached a picture. Can someone please confirm? Photo by Moz ZigdWMx
On-Page Optimization | | PratapSingh0 -
Canonical tag?
I have an e-commerce website and the query strings of the URL's are causing duplicate content/titles. I'm thinking of adding a site-wide canonical tag which should fix them all. Any other ideas of making it neater or better?
On-Page Optimization | | KarlBantleman0 -
Which title tag would you choose?
Target terms: Flower Pots, Plastic Flower Pots (in order of importance) Title tags: 1. Flower Pots - Plastic Flower Pots for Gardening with Free Delivery
On-Page Optimization | | Bondara
2. Flower Pots - Plastic Flower Pots with Free Delivery
3. Flower Pots - Plastic Flower Pots from [Brand] Which one would you choose and why? If you want to produce another type please do but explain why you think yours is better than the above. Thanks0 -
Are meta tags useless?
I thought they were, but I don't work for a full-fledged SEO agency. I'm a copywriter at a marketing firm so my SEO efforts are generally limited to inserting keywords into on-page content, page titles, and URLs. However, one of our clients works with an SEO agency. Whenever we add a new page to the client's website, they ask the SEO agency for keyword recommendations, which are then passed along to us to implement. The recommendations always include meta tags, so I guess I was wrong about them being useless? Can anyone tell me the purpose of meta tags? Thanks!
On-Page Optimization | | matt-145670 -
Page Title
Hi All, I am wondering if you could help me please. I am getting the following result after I run my On-Page Analysis Avoid Multiple Page Title Elements _Easy fix _ <dl style="font-style: normal;"> <dt>Page titles</dt> <dd>"Aquashowers-Shower Repairs Dublin -" and "Aquashowers - Shower Repairs Dublin"</dd> <dt>Explanation</dt> <dd>Web pages are meant to have a single title, and for both accessibility and search engine optimization reasons, we strongly recommend following this practice.</dd> <dt>Recommendation</dt> <dd>Remove all but a single page title element.</dd> </dl> Does this mean that i have 2 pages that are nearly identical or i should only name a page with one word? The reason i ask is because i have 1 page called "Aquashowers-Shower Repairs Dublin" and another called "Aquashowers-Dublin Shower Repair" I don't have a page called "Aquashowers - Shower Repairs Dublin" (with the space inbetween the words and the hyphen) Any help would be great. Thanks again Aidan
On-Page Optimization | | aidanlawlor0 -
Tags in wordpress -Important?
Hello, I use the Wordpress plataform in my blog. What I want to ask is, how important is the tag field in the posts area. Since I have the title tag and meta description how important is that field? Its really a question that was in my mind since I start doing SEO 😛 Tks in advance guys 🙂
On-Page Optimization | | PedroM0 -
Fixing Wordpress Title and Description Tag Placement
I know how important the title and description tag are and I know it is important to have them place at the top of the code. However, when I view the source on a Wordpress template, I see it looks messy. Here is an example of what the source looks like. Is there a plugin or an adjustment to be made so the code is cleaner? To get rid of spaces and blank lines in code. Or should I just not worry about the way the code looks? Notice the first example has a break after the <title>, then after the title there is this</p> <p style="color: #5e5e5e;"><strong><em><meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html; charset=UTF-8" /> </em></strong></p> <p style="color: #5e5e5e;"><strong><em> </em></strong>then the description? Can that be moved?</p> <p style="color: #5e5e5e;"> </p> <p style="color: #5e5e5e;"><span style="color: #5e5e5e;"><!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd"></span><span style="color: #5e5e5e;"><br /></span><span style="color: #5e5e5e;"><html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" dir="ltr" lang="en-US"></span><span style="color: #5e5e5e;"><br /></span><span style="color: #5e5e5e;"><span> </span><head profile="http://gmpg.org/xfn/11"></span><span style="color: #5e5e5e;"><br /></span><span style="color: #5e5e5e;"><span> </span><title></span><span style="color: #5e5e5e;"><br /></span><span style="color: #5e5e5e;"><span> </span>tite text goes here <span> </span></title> " /> Here there are no breaks after <title>and the <title> is directly above the description</p> <p style="color: #5e5e5e;"> </p> <p style="color: #5e5e5e;"><span style="color: #5e5e5e;"><!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd"></span></p> <p style="color: #5e5e5e;"><span style="color: #5e5e5e;"> </span><span style="color: #5e5e5e;"><html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" dir="ltr" lang="en-US"></span></p> <p style="color: #5e5e5e;"><span style="color: #5e5e5e;"><head profile="http://gmpg.org/xfn/11"></span></p> <p style="color: #5e5e5e;"><span style="color: #5e5e5e;"><meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html; charset=UTF-8" /></span></p> <p style="color: #5e5e5e;"><span style="color: #5e5e5e;"><title>tite text goes here</title>
On-Page Optimization | | hfranz0