Can you see if you have a penalty / downgrading for a keyword stuffed title tag ?
-
We’ve recently seen a gradual drop in organic listings for a site, the site has according to OSE the highest stats when compared to all its competitors.
Im beginning to think the site may be being penalised for an unnatural title tag. The title tag for the site is as follows :
[Service] [City] - [Company Name] - [Neighborhood] - West [City]
An example of the above <title>pattern would be :</p> <p><strong>Garden Design London - Acme Design - Chelsea - West London </strong></p> <p>The other sites that are outranking this site have title tags like :</p> <ul> <li dir="ltr"> <p dir="ltr"><span data-mce-mark="1">#1 (INDUSTRY SITE)</span></p> </li> </ul> <ul> <li dir="ltr"> <p dir="ltr">#2 James Davidson Design, London</p> </li> </ul> <ul> <li dir="ltr"> <p dir="ltr">#3 Jane Smith : Luxury Garden Design | London | Garden Landscaping</p> </li> <li dir="ltr"> <p dir="ltr">#4 Garden Designers London: BWI London Luxury Garden Design …</p> </li> <li dir="ltr"> <p dir="ltr">#5 (NATIONAL NEWSPAPER ARTICLE)</p> </li> <li dir="ltr"> <p dir="ltr">#6 Keers | High End Luxury Garden Designers in London</p> </li> <li dir="ltr"> <p dir="ltr">#7 Garden Design London - Acme Design - Chelsea - West London (The site in question)</p> </li> <li dir="ltr"> <p dir="ltr">#8 Sarah Franklin | Luxury Garden Design | London</p> </li> </ul> <p> </p> <p>Looking down the list they all seem to be using less keyword stuffed <title> tags than our the site sitting in #7. Bearing in mind that the site in #7 out ranks in terms of stats all other sites apart from #1 and #4 (which aren't competitors) in OSE</p> <p>Is it possible to if the site in #7 was given a penalty for the <title> tag ?</p> <p><br />(please note that the <title> tags ive listed above are representative of what the other sites are using, but ive changed the service and city to obfuscate the sites)</p></title>
-
I'm not sure if Eric meant more than the title tags, but personally I'd start with that.
-
Thanks eric, just to be clear when you say : "title tag (and updating the page)" do you mean updating the onpage content (eg. H1,
text etc) at the same time ?
-
Looking down the list they all seem to be using less keyword stuffed <title>tags than our the site sitting in #7</p> <p>If that's the case, then you should update your title tag(s), one page at a time, and then wait a few days after you update each one. You may see changes to rankings. It's worth testing. If you lose rankings, which I don't think you will, then you can always switch the title tag(s) back.</p> <p>But just updating the title tag (and updating the page) should give you a boost.</p></title>
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
-
How better can we compare with a competitor ?
We were ranking 1st to 5th spot for the keyword, "PSD to Joomla Template" for this page, http://www.qubesys.com/psd-to-joomla-template/ for last 2 years! But since last 6 months, we are getting like 0 traffic to this page and absolutely no leads. We just tried to compare with a ranking competitor who has been on top for last 7-8 months already, www.joomla6teen.com/Convert-PSD-to-Joomla-Template.html I just compared it with my page, http://www.opensiteexplorer.org/comparisons?site=www.joomla6teen.com%2FConvert-PSD-to-Joomla-Template.html&comparisons[0]=http://www.qubesys.com/psd-to-joomla-template/ I see our page wins in PAGE METRICS , but falls in SUB DOMAIN AND ROOT DOMAIN Metrics . Whats that ? How do we know, what all things we need to improve at ?
Competitive Research | | monali1230 -
Ranking for Competitive Keywords vs. Less Competitive Keyword Variations
I'm curious about situations where a website ranks very well for query variations, but doesn't rank for the query itself (or the reverse of that). For Redfin (where I work), here is the situation with regard to keyword rankings on Google (searched today from USA, incognito)... real estate search - #4 real estate online - #4 real estate site - #5 find real estate - #9 get real estate - #16 real estate - #163 It stands to reason that a site ranking well for a competitive query should also rank well for less competitive query variations - especially query variations that are non-limiting and do not demand a custom landing page (for example, I would consider 'board games' to dramatically limit the query 'games' and be best targeted with a targeted page...not so with 'real estate site' and 'real estate'). So, my question is, what are some theories regarding situations like this? Why do some sites rank so well for competitive queries but not for non-limiting query variations? Why aren't the sites that are crushing us for 'real estate' also crushing us for 'real estate' variations (to be clear...the top sites are crushing us for both)? Is it anchor text? Is it social signals? Is it offline signals, co-occurrence, or citations? What about internal linking and site structure? I realize it's likely a mix of all this, but I'm hoping we can drum up some new ideas here. FYI, on Bing we also rank very well for 'real estate' variations, but leap up to 31st for 'real estate'. Thoughts?
Competitive Research | | RyanOD0 -
Keyword - Competition between competitors
So, I'm about 2-3 weeks into my subscription and see a renewal coming. I love the information I'm getting - but I really want to maximize my capabilities with these tools. Any article/blogs or forum post suggestions that I should read would be awesome, right now I'm still in that phase where i see lots of cool things - but have no idea to fully use them to really give me that even bigger boost. My First Question is - There are some keywords, that I climb and sometimes slip. But overall a competitor and i flip flop between 15-22 range for it. What would be a good way for me to really add that extra push to throw me down into the top ten and leave them in the dust?.. Also on the Keyword topic - There are a lot of keywords they probably rank for that I don't, what is the best way to go about identifying keywords they may targeting/have a good presence in that I'm not aware of. I do have a site that is on multiple newspapers, and .gov sites. Among other things... This has already proven to be very good for me. But I'm 99% sure I have a few/lot of leaks, that if they were plugged - We would see a lot of good things come from those results.
Competitive Research | | choiceenergy0 -
Static Html Pages V/s Wordpress - For open content pages?
Hi there. I am worried a bit about static html pages or wordpress as an instance to write down open page content for our website. We are a product based website - primarily Saas based product. But with time we have seen that if we write more content people will be able to find us better,. Earlier our blog resided on blog.example.com now we are moving it to example.com/blog/ Issues - I really want to know that I need to generate lots of fresh content so I am using wordpress as the blog medium and content generation medium too. Basically the wordpress instance will be a content generated pages. I can also have static html page based content but then our content writers will always have to take the help of develoeprs to publish it to our sites. Whats the best way to go about this keeping SEO really crucial in mind? Thanks for your time and help!
Competitive Research | | shanky10 -
How can a site rank higher when you beat them by A LOT on virtually every SEOMOZ factor?
Any insight into what's driving these results would be appreciated. Another site ranks #6 and we rank #22 on a keyword that scores 67% for "Keyword Difficulty", but we score significantly higher than them on almost every ranking factor including having nearly 10 times more backlinks along with higher PA and DA scores,etc. Here is a comparison from the Keyword Difficulty Tool report. Question: What could be going on? Factor and ranking comparison (us v. them) with our higher rankings are listed first. PA: 61 v. 39, mozRank 5,85 v. 4,54, mozTrust 6.00 v. 5.49, mT/mR = 1.0 v. 1.2, total links = 4,198 v. 90, internal links = 4198 v 90, external links = 275 v. 57, followed links = 4171 v 85, no follow links = 27 v 5, linking root domains = 46 v 30 on-page grade = A v B broad keyword usage in title: yes v yes broad keyword usage in document: yes v yes keyword used in url = no v no keyword used in domain = partial v no KW exact match - no v no exact anchor text links = 2373 v 13 %links w/ exact anchor text = 56% v 14% linking root domains w/ exact anchor text = 7 v 8 % linking root domains w/ exact anchor text = 15% v 26% partial anchor text links = 0 v 0 Domain Authority = 54 v 27 Domain mozRank = 5.4 v 3.2 Domain mozTrust = 5.8 v 3.7 DmT/DmR = 1.1 v 1.2 External links to domain 9261 v 63 Linking root domains to this domain = 355 v 33 linking c- blocks domains to domain = 267 v 30 tweets = 4 v 3 FB shares = 13 v 11 Google Plus one shares = 1 v 0
Competitive Research | | rickt0070 -
Can i have chance to rank higher than official website in google local domains ?
Q : can i have chance to rank higher than official website in google local domains ? for example : rank higher than microsoft,kaspersky,nokia etc... in google italy or google germany or any other local domain for google
Competitive Research | | activeacts0 -
Does anyone know of a keyword difficulty API?
Hi Mozzers, I've made a script that uses the Google Adwords API to insert big lists of keywords ideas and their monthly search volume into our database. It would be awesome to be able to also automatically get a difficulty score for those keywords from a tool like the SEOmoz Keyword Difficulty Tool. Sadly this tool doesn't seem to be in the SEOmoz API. Google does provide a competition score in the AdWords API, but that's only based on the competitiveness of the AdWords auction for that keyword. So my question is: does anyone know another keyword difficulty tool, that does have an API? Thanks! Daan
Competitive Research | | Daan013 -
Keyword Ranks reported by SEOMOZ don't match actual searches
SEO Moz reported that various keywords I was tracking were not in the top 50 results on Yahoo or Bing, yet when I did a Yahoo or Bing search for those keywords (from multiple computers and not logged into any Yahoo or MSN/Bing account) I found the keywords easily. What's the scoop?
Competitive Research | | Cybernautic0