Mobile homepage title is showing unrelated text
-
Hi all,
I've read the FAQs and searched the help center. My URL is: http://www.leibish.com/I just discover it today - when searching on mobile for the brand name (search for "Leibish") I find the following title: Reply (see the attached image).Also, when searching for site:leibish.com +reply you'll find at least a few dozens indexed pages with this title.I checked for the following:1. Link bombing - check with ahrefs and majestic - everything seemed fine.2. Alt tag or other hidden text - couldn't find anything. 3. DMOZ or Yahoo directory submissions with this anchor text - yet, nothing.Besides the fact that I must fix this issue I find it fascinating from the SEO perspective. I need the big guns in here - can you help my resolve this mystery? :-)Thanks...
-
Hi Kristina,
Thanks for that, I really appreciate it. I'll follow Rand's tweet for additional insights.
-
Hi Shahar,
Okay, this one has stumped me enough that I reached out to Moz associates, who were equally surprised. Rand tweeted about it, and the SEO of another site has the same problem, but no one can see anything that you or they are doing that's wrong enough to warrant this. Google's clearly got a bug.
So, my (and Rand's) broad advice is to make your brand as clear as possible:
- Make sure that all of your page titles end in your brand name. I know that you've just updated your blog posts to append your brand name, but double check that there aren't other pages on your site without it.
- Make sure that your title tag structure is clear. You have some title tags that start with your brand name and others that end in it. Choose one or the other (I prefer to end with it) and set that up across the whole site. The only exception here is your homepage, which can start with your brand when everything else ends in it.
- Use your brand name on your page more often. Leibish is on your homepage 3 times; my company's homepage uses our brand name 21 times. Don't do this to the point of keyword stuffing, of course, but find ways you can use it more often.
That's all I've got - we're all keeping our fingers crossed for you! Let us know if things start to right themselves.
Best,
Kristina
-
Gosh, this is so weird.
I will say, it looks like on desktop results all of the pages that end in "- Reply" are your blog pages which haven't been recrawled since you appended your brand name. You might want to go into GWT (or, Search Console, now, because Google likes keeping us on our toes) and "Fetch" the top pages that show up with "- Reply" and ask Google to add them to the index. Hopefully, if Google sees all of these pages showing up with your proper brand, it'll figure things out quicker.
-
Not really. I can only think of the Facebook blog comments (with the word reply), but it doesn't make sense Google would use it that way.
-
I thought of that, but from what I remember, you still have <title>s on the mobile version of the HTML, right?</p> <p>Also, I double checked, and "site:leibish.com reply" returns desktop results with "- Reply" appended, too, though it looks like it's only doing that to your blog pages. Do you have any internal settings in the blog that may be off?</p></title>
-
Hi Kritina,
Thanks for the very through answer. We have implmented the schema.org and removed the "buy" keywords from all the titles.
However, it still seems we see the reply in the titles.
I thought about other option - perhaps it's concerning the mobile serving - they use the dynamic serving method. Do you think there might be an issue in here?
-
Wow. This is a weird one.
The way Google has used "Reply," it seems to think that's your brand name. All of the pages that show up with "Reply" in the page title other than your homepage have " - Reply" appended to the end, like a brand. I've seen Google do this a lot when page titles are just the title of the article, without the brand appended.
The question I can't answer is, why does Google think your brand name is Reply? One really out there idea I have: does Leibish sound like any words in Hebrew that Google may think it's translating for us?
Anyway, my guess is that your unspoken question is, how do I get Googlebot Mobile to label my site correctly? I would:
- Append your actual brand name to the end of every page title on your site. It looks like you rarely do this, so Google isn't seeing your brand name in <title>tags at all, which may be confusing it.</li> <ul> <li>Your titles are already on the long side, so I'd take this time to trim them as well. I like to use <a href="http://www.seomofo.com/snippet-optimizer.html">SEOmofo </a>to test out page titles as I write them.</li> <li>My first suggestion is for you to cut out the SKU - people rarely search for those, and if they do, Google will match them with the text on your page.</li> <li>Also, be a bit less sales-y. Google doesn't love "Buy" in page titles, which you have on your category pages.</li> </ul> <li>Use schema.org to mark up your site, labeling Leibish as the "Name" and probably marking up your address and phone number while you're at it. </li> </ul> <p>I only have two bullets because really...it seems like Google is being dumb here.</p> <p>Anyway, I hope this helps! I'm sorry I wasn't able to come up with more insights. Let us know how things go.</p> <p>Best,<br />Kristina</p></title>
-
Hi Umar,
Nope, but we'll implement it.
However, I'm not sure that's the issue. That might resolve this, but still we don't understand how the "reply" came out. It seems to me it indicates a much wider issue. Also, the post you provided is not exactly the same, as it's related to a scenario in which a page have two title tags. That's not the case. Furthermore, we still don't have a clue where the "reply" came from.
-
Hey Shahar,
This is a usual tactic from google especially in desktop searches. Sometimes it creates own titles if it finds yours to be short, over-used, poorly written & stuffed with keywords.
As far as the mobile in concerned, have you tried to use Schema.org's JSON/ microdata markup?
JSON:
Microdata:
<title itemprop="name">Your WebSite Name</title>I'm sure when next time Google index your page, your own title tag would appear.
Do check out these resources:
https://moz.com/ugc/google-serp-test-multiple-page-title-meta-description-tags (Check out the comments section too)
https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/35624?rd=1Hope this helps to solve your mystery
Thanks,
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 Homepage - How to fix?
Hi Everyone, I've tried using BeamUsUp SEO Crawler and have found one warning and two errors on our site. The warning is for a duplicate meta description, and the errors are a duplicate page and a duplicate title. For each problem it's showing the same two pages as the source of the error, but one has a slash at the end and one doesn't. They're both for the homepage. https://www.url.com/ And https://www.url.com Has anyone seen this before? Does anyone know if this is anything we should worry about?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | rswhtn1 -
Long Title Tags
Hi guys, We have product e-commerce title tags which are over 60 characters - around 80 plus. The reason we added them in there is to incorporate
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | seowork214
more information for Google. The format of these title tags are: Name + Colour + Rug Type + Origin Name = for people searching for the name of the rug
Color = people searching for a specific color
Type = The type of rug (e.g. normal or designer)
Origin = Where the rug is for. So this title will cover people searching for: People searching for designer rugs, the specific colour and also where it comes from. This then results in the title tag going way over 60 characters - around 80-90 characters. -- Would it be wise to try and shrink it down to under 60 characters, and what would be a good approach to do this? Cheers.0 -
Anchor text optimisation
Hi, I would like to know the best anchor text practices. I think it's same for On-page and Off-page. As per the internet seo buzz, people suggests differently as below. Which actually work out? Exact match with target page title or partial match Will "Read more" and "learn more" are Okay? How much it must be relevant with URL? Thanks, Satish
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | vtmoz0 -
SEO value of article title content?
I work for an online theater news publisher. Our article page titles include various pieces of data: the title, publication date, article category, and our domain name (theatermania.com). Are all of these valuable from an SEO standpoint? My sense it'd be cleaner to just show the title (and nothing more) on a SERP. But we'll certainly keep whatever helps us with rankings.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | TheaterMania0 -
Yoast seo title question
I was referred to this plugin and have found it to be the most irritating and poorly designed plugin in the world. I want to be able to set my titles without it changing my page headers as well. For instance - If I set my title to be "This is my article name | site name" it will make my H1 tag read the same. I do not want or desire this nonsense. Why would they think this is something wise? Why would I want my site name on every single H1 tag on my site? How can I fix this? I only want my title to be my title. I want my H1 tag to remain the post/page name that I define in wordpress.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Atomicx0 -
Google displaying the homepage instead of the landing page
I have a landing page that was ranking before for web design philippines its http://www.myoptimind.com/web-design-philippines Early this year, we dropped our rank and google displayed our homepage http://www.myoptimind.com When i search for "web design company philippines", i rank. however, for "web design philippines" I am on page 2. When I try "web design philippines" site:myoptimind.com it shows the landing page as the 2nd result. Last week, we tried to change the content of the page to reflect content that is more related to the keyword and moved the old content to http://www.myoptimind.com/web-design-services-philippines. We also changed the title of the homepage from Web Design Philippines | SEO Company Philippines to Web Design & SEO Company Philippines Still nothing has changed. I just wanted it to show the landing page instead of the root domain. Any idea how this can be solved?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | optimind0 -
Should we include a canonical or noindex on our m. (mobile) pages?
According to https://developers.google.com/webmasters/smartphone-sites/details, we should include a canonicalicalize back to our desktop version of the URL, but what if that desktop URL is noindexed? Should the m. version be noindexed as well? Or is it fine to leave it as a canonical?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | nicole.healthline0 -
Duplicate titles got me stumped
Webmaster tools is showing duplicate titles for example: http://www.musicliveuk.com/lincolnshire/bands-in-lincolnshire/ and: http://www.musicliveuk.com/lincolnshire%20/bands-in-lincolnshire/ What's the %20 all about? I didn't create that page and it is a duplicate of the first. I'm also getting them for some pages with capitialisation? Eg: http://www.musicliveuk.com/lincolnshire/bands-in-lincolnshire/ http://www.musicliveuk.com/Lincolnshire/bands-in-lincolnshire/ I have also installed buddypress on another site I work on (I use wordpress) and have since had duplicate title issues for members that have signed up: /members/admin/activity/friends/ /members/admin/activity/groups/ /members/admin/activity/just-me/ These pages are all showing duplicate titles? How can I fix this? I use all in one SEO pack and have <a title="Click for Help!">Canonical URLs checked.</a> Any help much appreciated!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | SamCUK0