How would changing every title tag on your site at once affect SEO?
-
We are moving our website to a new CMS, and working with a vendor who would like to change the title tags from the current format to a breadcrumb structure. Our fear is that this may negatively impact the current optimization efforts in place. Our current title tags are a mixed bag of good, bad and neutral, but some have been optimized for best practices. Does anyone have any insight on the effect we would see if everything were changed at once, or any suggestions on how we could test this before we launch the "new" site?
Thanks!
-
Thanks for your input everyone!
-
No problem Cesar.
With 1500 pages, the most time-efficient thing to do right now is to keep and/or write your own for the most important landing pages and use a different template format for the others.
It's not reasonable to go writing 1500 page titles and meta descriptions right now but for at least your primary landing pages (if it's ecommerce then your category and subcategory pages), you should be writing them manually.
As for the other pages, using a templated approach is your best bet for the time being but the breadcrumb style will still give you quite a lot of duplication which is a bit of a worry. If you have 200 products under a single subcategory, that's 202 pages that all have the same keyword(s) in the title:
Category
Category - Subcategory
Category - Subcategory - Product 1
Category - Subcategory - Product 2
Category - Subcategory - Product 3
etcA better-templated approach for an ecommerce site is to use basic product info and your brand as the page title.
For example, _iPhone 6s Replacement Screen - VX902 | FoneScreenz _
In this example it includes the name of the product on that page, and a product code which would both be variables, as well as the business name (FYI the product code and business are fabricated). This covers users searching by either product name or the specific code and is descriptive enough that it will do just fine.
Basically, the template would look something like:
[Product Name] - [Product Code] | Business Name
-
Thanks Chris and Erick,
You both touch on something that we are concerned about... Is moving to a breadcrumb structure going to make the tags too generic and negatively impact the ones we have optimized to be unique and attention grabbing? (And yes, Chris, that is a good example of the structure it would become)
On one hand, we have some title tags that were written a few years ago when keyword stuffing was encouraged. Obviously these need to be changed, so in this case we would consider it a positive to move to a breadcrumb structure to at least wipe any negative effects of keyword stuffing, even if the result isn't the most relevant.
On the other hand, we have gone through and edited the title tags of some pages so they are optimized for length, keyword placement, etc. and these are the ones we don't want to lose.
Our biggest concern, however, is the ones we don't know about. We are under a bit of a time crunch at this point, and the website has over 1,500 pages of content. Going through each title tag and assessing it's value will be a fairly time-consuming process unless there are tools that I'm unaware of.
Any suggestions?
Thanks!
-
Hi Cesar,
I would think that changing it all at once may have both positive and negative effects for you based on what your current status is as far as the SERPS go. Use MOZ on page grader https://moz.com/researchtools/on-page-grader to check to see how your pages rank for the keywords you are targeting on each page. You can also check your rankings by running a report in MOZ. Then you can see where you stand. Next try switching a few, getting re indexed, check your SERPS and run the reports again.
But you may want to have your vendor try something else.
I would caution against a breadcrumb structure because it may not really help you. I am not familiar with your site, but in general Title tags can be used for both SEO and to increase click-through. What I mean is that you need the TITLE to look good in the SERPS so that people will click on them and go to your site. The same goes for the META Description, it is not used for SEO but it can be a great way to increase click-through by presenting a very short description of what the user will find on the page if they click your link.
You may be better off researching what it is you want these pages to rank for and then creatively optimize for that in your titles, descriptions, and all other on page content.
Hope that helps!
Erick -
Updating them all at once isn't inherently bad, it's more about the quality of the updated ones that may see a negative impact.
When you say a breadcrumb structure, I immediately think of something like this: "Letterboxes - Steel - Small | Site Name" - is that what they're looking to move to? Handcrafted ones can be made far more compelling and often less spammy but it depends on the context of your site really and how many pages you're talking about.
Regardless of the number of pages, you should at least be writing them manually for the key landing pages - remember, the main reason for a page title is to attract that click from the right type of user in the SERPs.
If you'd like to share some examples of the proposed ones I can probably be much more helpful
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
-
Unsolved Google Ads - Subdomain on Sitelinks & Composition Change for Strategy Status
I have a basic query but could not find a definite answer on the internet. I am currently running a campaign for the main website of a big education brand and they also have a secondary learning website on subdomain, and I want to add sitelinks of subdomain to the campaign, but I am not sure whether it is allowed or not. The brand I am running ads for is https://www.rauias.com/ and the secondary website is https://compass.rauias.com/ branded slightly different in a subdomain, so should I add the sitelinks of Compass to the main campaign? Also one more silly question My Max Conversion search campaign gave me this status today. "Learning (composition change): Campaigns have been added to or removed from the bid strategy. Google Ads is now adjusting to optimize bids. 5 days left for learning" What does this mean exactly? And Why does it reenter the learning phase whenever I make a small change?
Paid Search Marketing | | rauoff0 -
Has anyone tried Captora? Curious about people's thoughts on potential benefits and risks for SEO.
We talked to a vendor called Captora today and I'm curious if anyone else has tried them. It seems like it's too good to be true and could lead to issues should Google get wise to this tactic. So what are people's thoughts? watch?v=SVSCPrcXXDQ
Paid Search Marketing | | VMTurbo-Marketing0 -
How to change booking system in SERP for a Hotel Result
Hi, I was wondering how can I change the reservation system that appears in the SERP when someone search for a hotel. Now, the price that is showing is from booking.com. Of course the Hotel wants to use its own reservation system. How could I do that? If It's possible, of course. I have attached an screenshot so that you can see an example. Thank you. serp.jpg
Paid Search Marketing | | teconsite0 -
Adwords account suspended for talking about SEO. Why isn't Moz suspended, too?
First let me say that we don't care that much about Adwords. We were spending about 20 bucks a month and we never optimized it, tinkered with it, or cared that much. Business is booming for us just with organic search and referrals from happy customers. (We're a blog writing service called BlogMutt. Motto: We work like a dog to fill up your blog.) But we just got suspended from Adwords. After multiple inquiries and multiple unhelpful responses, we got a note that said: "Please note that your website contains matter which states your site's SEO increases. Anything which relates to SEO is not allowed as per Google Policies. Please make appropriate changes to your website." Now, we don't say your site's SEO increases with BlogMutt. What we do say is what everyone says, that blogging is a best practice for any modern marketing effort. We certainly are less clear about improving search rankings than, for example, moz.com. Why is it OK for Moz, but not for us? Don't get me wrong. I think Moz should be able to continue advertising. I'm just wondering how we got into the Adwords crosshairs. Any thoughts?
Paid Search Marketing | | scodtt0 -
Do Adwords affect organic rank?
I used to rank 2 for "guitar outlet" I just dropped to under 50th. Only change I made was to pause a Adwords campaign where I was including that keyword. Oddly enough, I believe I ranked high for that keyword BEFORE I added it as a keyword, but I cant be 100% sure due to lack of timing notes. But is it common for adwords to affect organic? If not...where do I start to look for the answer as to why it dropped?
Paid Search Marketing | | Retail_Endeavors0 -
Google Remarketing Tag
Is the code snippet for a Google Remarketing Tag specific to one domain, or will it collect the audience list for any webpage(s) of any domain? Best,
Paid Search Marketing | | ChristopherGlaeser
Christopher0 -
Bought old site. Two weeks later, rankings burnt... could this be why?
Hi all, Just joined SEOmoz. Good to be here. I bought an amateur business directory site (not a web directory, but actual profiles of professionals) started in 2004 with page 1 rankings for the top 2 keywords in a professionals niche. Very stable rankings for years and super clean link profile. However I fear I have killed the asset in a matter of weeks, hopefully it's not terminal... here's what I did: #NOTE: I have reverted all changes 2 days ago, but still going down in the rankings. **A) Added Google Analytics:**I think this is what killed it. Why? I didn't realize the analytics account I used had been previously used for a website that was burnt by the search engines, I believe because of duplicate content (I copied a full glossary from a book, didn't know better at the time).Looking at my AWstats the traffic started going down slightly the same day I put the code. It's gone from 170 to 80 visitors per day in 1 week, steadily going down. I rank page 4 or 8 now for what I was page 1 before :(Could it be Google all of a sudden linked that blacklisted (I suppose) Analytics account with the newly purchased site and decided to doom it as well?How can I redeem it?I have taken out the analytics code snippet and deleted the url from the account.OTHER CHANGES: B) On-site SEO: Added H1 in homepage with main keyword (only had H2s before)- Added H1 in each professional profile page "[Professional type] in [Region]" (only had H2s before)- Changed title "[Professional type] - Region: [Region], Professional [Name]The idea behind the changes was to add H1 which in my understanding is very important and was missing, and to include the location in the title, as many searches are of the type "[Professional] in [region]".I think what could have hurt it is now many pages have the same H1.I have reversed all changes.C) I launched a Google Adwords test campaign.In the campaign, because it was a quick test to see how much traffic I could get from the kws, not an attempt to get new sign ups, I simply copy-pasted a landing page from another site and tweaked the text so it made sense to my audience. I run the test for a day or two.
Paid Search Marketing | | Demosthenes
D) Added Hellobar.There was no correlation in time between adding the hellobar and rankings going down, so I don't think this mattered. I have taken it out too.**THANKS FOR YOUR HELP!**I really want to develop a long term asset I can focus on full-time but I fear I may have stupidly doomed the whole website already.0