I'm changing title tags and meta tags, url, will i loose my ranking?

[edward-may]

Hi Guys

QUESTION: I'm currently going through a re-design for my new website that was published in November 2014 - since launching we found there were many things we needed to change, our pages were content thin being one of the biggest. I had industry experts that came in and made comments on the title tags lacking relevance for eg: our title tag for our home page is currently "Psychic Advice" most ideal customers don't search "Psychic Advice" they search more like "Online Psychic Reading" or Psychic Readings" I noticed alot of my competitors also were using title tags such as Online Psychic Readings, Free Psychic Readings etc so it brings me to my question of "changing the title tags around.  The issue is, im ranking for two keywords in my industry, online psychics and online psychic readings in NZ.

1. Our home page and category pages are content thin.... so hoping that adding the changes will create perhaps some consistency also with the added unique and quality content.

Here is the current website: zenory. co.nz and the new one is www.ew-zenory.herokuapp.com which is currently in development

I have 3 top level domains com,com.au, and co.nz

Is there anyone that can give me an idea if I were to change my home page title tag to

**ZENORY | Online Psychic Readings | Live Psychic Phone and Chat **

If this will push my rankings down though this page will have alot more valuable content etc?  For obvious reasons im going to guess it will make drop, I'm wondering though if it is worth changing the title tags and meta descriptions around or leaving it as is if its already doing well?

How much of a difference do title tags and meta descriptions really make?

Any insight into this would be great!

Thanks

[edward-may]

Thanks Christina!!! Appreciate your feedback!

[ChristinaRadisic]

If your customers are searching for Online Psychic Readings than the title you have chosen should work well for you.

• Christina

[edward-may]

Thank you again Alick300!!!!

[edward-may]

Hi Patrick,

Thank you for your follow up!

Yes all domains are the same content, aka duplicate on all domains - however we added all of the Hreflang tags and also the CcTLDs for all domains, and I know a competitor does the same as well, and have been running for around 7 years etc and seems to be working ok.

I haven't looked into canonical tags yet, but am looking into it currently?  Can you tell me what you mean by "original source" meta tags?

[edward-may]

Hi Christina,

Yes we ran PPC and alot of them were coming from our .com domain not our co.nz obviously its a bigger country.  But it seems strange we are ranking page 1 for online psychic readings but the ctr is pretty low in nz, this is what it told me when we ran the PPC as well.  It was alot faster to get to that position for NZ obviously, but what concerns me is that we are not ranking anywhere in google for our .com site.

I have set up the right tags etc for CcTLDs and Hreflang tags etc we try to make content as relevant to those areas as possible but in most cases it is near impossible.

But for the .com it seems quiet strange, do you have any thought around this?

[edward-may]

Thanks Tom for the heads up, I will read into more of the cannibalization link you sent me!

[edward-may]

Thanks Rick, you are so helpful! I have responded to Christina as per what you suggested as well - let me know what your thoughts are around my new title tag if that is okay?

Many thanks for your contributions as well!

[edward-may]

Thank you so much Christina!!! The more the better

I'm currently using in my home page title tag:

Psychic Advice Online - Phone and Chat - Zenory, but my clients don't search for "psychic advice online" its rare, they search for "online psychic readings, or psychic readings, chat psychic readings and phone psychic readings" so I was wanting to change my title tag to

"Online Psychic Readings via Phone and Chat - Zenory" My competitors also have something like

(Free Psychic Readings Online - Live Psychic Chat - Phone Readings - Company Name)

or (Company Name - Online Psychic Readings, Tarot, Astrology, love Advice)

What are you thought around this? I see a few of my competitors tend to write longer title tags as well

[LinkWheelOldSchool]

It's exactly how Christina put it:

• keyword in title (the more keywords in title the better)

• title needs to make sense (as a sentence, not just as an enumeration of keywords)

• keyword closer to the beginning of the title it's a common practice

• keep it up to 70 characters long (google will truncate longer titles)

• also use your brand / site name somewhere

The example Christina gave is great, but to include even more keywords (and if you company is a local one) I would do:

"Top Rated UK Web Design Company - DR Adept" - as this would include the keywords uk web design company, top rated web design company, etc (combinations of all the words in there, you get the drift) - it won't rank as well for all of them, but it will be there.

[ChristinaRadisic]

I know you've asked someone else for this answer, but as it's something I think I can help with, I hope you both don't mind my answering it. If I'm trending on toes please let me know so I don't make the same mistake in future - Cheers Christina

Yes you need keywords, and the closer to the beginning of the title the better.

But unless the sentence of the title makes sense to the user then you are likely to have a lower CTR.

Think about your keyword and what the page is about.

As an example my title tag would simple say 'Web Design Company - DR Adept'.

[edward-may]

Hi Rick

Thanks for your comments and feedback!

Just a quick question, how would you go about finding or coming up with well optimized titles? What should I be looking for?

I have looked into title tags my competitors are currently using, and they seem to put alot of keywords in there.

Cheers

[LinkWheelOldSchool]

The only way to go is up, just make sure you keep your titles well optimized.

[ChristinaRadisic]

If your website isn't that powerful then changing title tags can drop the sites rankings for that set of keywords if you are looking for an exact match.

The titles you are proposing seem relevant, and there isn't that big a change so your rankings should be ok.

Before changing title tags I usually test keywords in PPC to see which have better CTRs.  I also pay a lot of attention to the terms my clients use and not what people within my industry use.

[TomBinga1125]

I've completed site audits where the only thing I changed was the title tags which resulted in an increase in rankings and organic traffic.

Make sure you don't have any keyword cannibalization going on and you should be fine.

[PatrickDelehanty]

Hi Justin

From the sounds of things, you have no where to go but up, honestly.

You've listed the following:

• More valuable content (FANTASTIC!)

• Updating title and meta tags (FANTASTIC!)

• Yes, they do matter

• Title tags are one of your most important (if not, THE most important) onsite SEO ranking factors

• Meta descriptions, while not a ranking factor, are a great "first pitch" to searchers and can increase CTR - use them

Are these 3 top level domains going to be all the same content? Or are they going to be their own standalone sites? I would be extremely mindful in that situation as you could run into a major duplicate content issue. Mind your canonical tags as well as (possibly) "original-source" meta tags if necessary.

Hope this helps you, let me know if you have any questions, but it sounds like you are making some good moves here. Good luck!!!

[Alick300]

Hi Justin,

As you know that meta title is very important on page factor so if you change meta title that could affect but in your case I don't thing it will affect too much because you are using very similar terms . *** CTR would also very important rule to improve ranking so write title in such a way that you can get more clicks.****

Second thing I would like to suggest you to use those keywords that currently in title you should place those keyword into web page content/ H1 tag where you find appropriate.

Meta description is not ranking factor directly but indirectly yes it is a ranking factor because a good meta description can increase CTR & if CTR will increase keyword ranking will improve. So you can change it to more compelling meta description in order to improve your CTR.

URL - You can change URL by using 301 redirect maximum link juice will pass to new URL.

You can follow this URL in case of Title tag

Firstst word in the title is the most important. Second word is the 2nd most important. The last word in the title tag is the least important.

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Hope this helps.

Thanks