Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
What are best page titles for sub-folders or sub-directories? Same as website?
-
Hi all,
We always mention "brand & keyword" in every page title along with topic in the website, like "Topic | vertigo tiles".
Let's say there is a sub-directory with hundreds of pages...what will be the best page title practice in mentioning "brand & keyword" across all pages of sub-directory to benefit in-terms if SEO?
Can we add "vertigo tiles" to all pages of sub-directory? Or we must not give same phrase?
Thanks,
-
VTCRM,
Good luck!
-- Jewel
-
Thanks Jewel,
So we stick on this and get back to you for any other clarifications.
-
CTRM,
I'm glad my response helped you.
To my eyes, without looking at keyword rankings, etc., the middle one looks like the most natural language version.
Good luck, and feel free to ping me if I can provide any additional ideas.
-- Jewel
-
I think it's Okay to go with as I noticed many are practising same from our industry. And I feel like "brand & keyword" is not going to hurt; if so it must be hurting all the pages of website being with same suffix across all page titles. I think Topic name is going to play key role which we possibly do not have duplicate content issues. Our new sub directory is a help guide and I am planning to add "help" and choose one of the below format.
Topic | help - vertigo tile
Topic | vertigo tiles help
Topic | vertigo tiles - help
-
Hi Jewel,
Thanks for such descriptive answer which explains a lot. Rather than worrying about getting penalised; I would like to make sure which way of using brand and main keyword across these page titles fetch in SEO. Actually our sub-directory is all about help guides. So I decided to go with our brand name and keyword as per you suggestion with high confidence levels. Again I need to add "help" to this...So I am now in finding out the best natural looking out of below:
Topic | help - vertigo tile
Topic | vertigo tiles help
Topic | vertigo tiles - help
-
Hello VTCRM,
This is a tough call. Because it is a branding versus SEO issue. Convention is to put the website's name on all the pages. However, you are correct to be concerned about duplication and "too much".
I decided to poke around on some big websites, where I know they have usability experts and ought to have the $$$ for high quality SEO. It looks like the convention is have the name in there, either as a repeated tagline, the company name, or as part of the product.
Target uses SquareSpace AFAIK, so even with customization, that may be a requirement of the platform, to repeat the tagline. But having used SquareSpace, it is probably their choice, as they have the programmers to change that.
I looked at Home Depot, and they do use their name in the product title. I also examined Nike. They use the name integrated into the product name, so not tagged on at the end.
My advice, then, would be to follow the convention and add the name to the title. I think the Google search engine has been programmed will enough to understand the brand name versus spamming.
Nike's way of integrating the name into the product is the one that stands out to me as potential SEO buster for spam. However, again, I think search engines ought to be able to pick apart a site or product name from spamming.
I think if you stick to convention and do "Topic | vertigo tiles", you'll be all right. As don_quixote pointed out, removing the standard branding name from the title does give you more room for other keywords. I agree with him that you should think through your navigation carefully, as you are doing, and that includes the page names ==> URL/slug names (the overall Information Architecture).
To summarize, do I think you'll be penalized for following web convention of the past 20 years and tacking your brand name/website name to the title? No.
Then your question will be, do you want to do this?
It sounds like you do, but you are hesitant because of fears of a duplication penalty. I don't think you need to worry about that, especially given these big sites are doing it.
The other aspect to information retrieval, is the location of one term or phrase near another that creates associations and helps in findability. Associating "product X women's tennis shoes" with "Nike" is a genuine association.
I think you'll be fine to add that name to the title, assuming you don't want the real estate for other keywords. IOW, I see no reason why you would be penalized. (And if not, contact me, and I'll help you fix it on my time!)
Me? I tend to follow convention in that regard. I'll buck convention in other areas, but you ought to be fine. (If it matters, I started building websites in 1995, I have worked with CMS systems for years, and I have yet to be penalized.)
-- Jewel
-
Without going into how to technically achieve the outcome. It may be beneficial to go back one step and consider drawing up a the url structure. Lay out the keyword/s being targeted for the global home page and then the first sub-folders. The url structure, when laid out, with keywords, should provide guidance on the layout of Title's and H1's. We often take out the company name/brand when required and use the 600 pixels available to optimise the page. This allows more individual title tags for search and customers. ie Your client will likely rank No 1-3 for their brand and brand labelling inner pages, unless beneficial for the customer experience is unlikely to assist brand ranking...
You may only want to index some of the sub directory pages... as well. rel canonical the juice back to the header page..
Anyway I like to go back to the url structure, and find when I get that right everything flows easily from there...
So in answer to your question - No I would not recommend you put vertigo tiles on every page of the sub-folder. I would make sure each page has a unique relevant title.. and a closely though not exact matching H1... to the page content. I add I see "black vertigo tiles" as different to "white vertigo tiles"
Hope that assists.
-
Hi Jewel,
Our website is wordpress and yes it auto generates our company name and main keyword to rear of the every page title. This is good because we do have targetiitng keywords and brand on all pages.
Our sub-directory is a different CMS. It's been hosted independently with own design. This will be even auto generated. My doubt is whether repeating same "company name and keyword" in all page titles of this sub-directory good or bad? Will this be kind of duplicate look for Google? Or it'll help us in the keyword scenario?
Thanks
-
What website platform/CMS are you using? Does it auto-generate your website name to either the front or rear of the page title? For example, as WordPress does? Or, is this something you can suppress, which I believe SquareSpace allows (but don't quote me on that).
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
-
Should I optimize the login page? Will it affect the website SEO ranking?
I'm trying to resolve the site crawl issues that we have on our website. One of the links that has different issue types together is our login page. Currently we have two login pages that have the same content but different sub domains. **However I'm wondering if optimizing SEO on our login pages affects our website SEO ranking and if it's something better to do or not. ** To point out the details of the issues, the issue types that the logins pages have are "duplicate title", "duplicate content", "missing H1", "missing description", "thin content", "missing canonical tag" I'd appreciate your help, thank you!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Kaylie0 -
Best Practices for Title Tags for Product Listing Page
My industry is commercial real estate in New York City. Our site has 300 real estate listings. The format we have been using for Title Tags are below. This probably disastrous from an SEO perspective. Using number is a total waste space. A few questions:
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Kingalan1
-Should we set listing not no index if they are not content rich?
-If we do choose to index them, should we avoid titles listing Square Footage and dollar amounts?
-Since local SEO is critical, should the titles always list New York, NY or Manhattan, NY?
-I have red that titles should contain some form of branding. But our company name is Metro Manhattan Office Space. That would take up way too much space. Even "Metro Manhattan" is long. DO we need to use the title tag for branding or can we just focus on a brief description of page content incorporating one important phrase? Our site is: w w w . m e t r o - m a n h a t t a n . c o m <colgroup><col width="405"></colgroup>
| Turnkey Flatiron Tech Space | 2,850 SF $10,687/month | <colgroup><col width="405"></colgroup>
| Gallery, Office Rental | Midtown, W. 57 St | 4441SF $24055/month | <colgroup><col width="405"></colgroup>
| Open Plan Loft |Flatiron, Chelsea | 2414SF $12,874/month | <colgroup><col width="405"></colgroup>
| Tribeca Corner Loft | Varick Street | 2267SF $11,712/month | <colgroup><col width="405"></colgroup>
| 275 Madison, LAW, P7, 3,252SF, $65 - Manhattan, New York |0 -
Why some websites can rank the keywords they don't have in the page?
Hello guys, Yesterday, I used SEMrush to search for the keyword "branding agency" to see the SERP. The Liquidagency ranks 5th on the first page. So I went to their homepage but saw no exact keywords "branding agency", even in the page source. Also, I didn't see "branding agency" as a top anchor text in the external links to the page (from the report of SEMrush). I am an SEO newbie, can someone explain this to me, please? Thank you.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Raymondlee0 -
Why does Google rank a product page rather than a category page?
Hi, everybody In the Moz ranking tool for one of our client's (the client sells sport equipment) account, there is a trend where more and more of their landing pages are product pages instead of category pages. The optimal landing page for the term "sleeping bag" is of course the sleeping bag category page, but Google is sending them to a product page for a specific sleeping bag.. What could be the critical factors that makes the product page more relevant than the category page as the landing page?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Inevo0 -
Subdomains vs directories on existing website with good search traffic
Hello everyone, I operate a website called Icy Veins (www.icy-veins.com), which gives gaming advice for World of Warcraft and Hearthstone, two titles from Blizzard Entertainment. Up until recently, we had articles for both games on the main subdomain (www.icy-veins.com), without a directory structure. The articles for World of Warcraft ended in -wow and those for Hearthstone ended in -hearthstone and that was it. We are planning to cover more games from Blizzard entertainment soon, so we hired a SEO consultant to figure out whether we should use directories (www.icy-veins.com/wow/, www.icy-veins.com/hearthstone/, etc.) or subdomains (www.icy-veins.com, wow.icy-veins.com, hearthstone.icy-veins.com). For a number of reason, the consultant was adamant that subdomains was the way to go. So, I implemented subdomains and I have 301-redirects from all the old URLs to the new ones, and after 2 weeks, the amount of search traffic we get has been slowly decreasing, as the new URLs were getting index. Now, we are getting about 20%-25% less search traffic. For example, the week before the subdomains went live we received 900,000 visits from search engines (11-17 May). This week, we only received 700,000 visits. All our new URLs are indexed, but they rank slightly lower than the old URLs used to, so I was wondering if this was something that was to be expected and that will improve in time or if I should just go for subdomains. Thank you in advance.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | damienthivolle0 -
Best practice for retiring old product pages
We’re a software company. Would someone be able to help me with a basic process for retiring old product pages and re-directing the SEO value to new pages. We are retiring some old products to focus on new products. The new software has much similar functionality to the old software, but has more features. How can we ensure that the new pages get the best start in life? Also, what is the best way of doing this for users? Our plan currently is to: Leave the old pages up initially with a message to the user that the old software has been retired. There will also be a message explaining that the user might be interested in one of our new products and a link to the new pages. When traffic to these pages reduces, then we will delete these pages and re-direct them to the homepage. Has anyone got any recommendations for how we could approach this differently? One idea that I’m considering is to immediately re-direct the old product pages to the new pages. I was wondering if we could then provide a message to the user explaining that the old product has been retired but that the new improved product is available. I’d also be interested in pointing the re-directs to the new product pages that are most relevant rather than the homepage, so that they get the value of the old links. I’ve found in the past that old retirement pages for products can outrank the new pages as until you 301 them then all the links and authority flow to these pages. Any help would be very much appreciated 🙂
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | RG_SEO0 -
What is the best way to optimize/setup a teaser "coming soon" page for a new product launch?
Within the context of a physical product launch what are some ideas around creating a /coming-soon page that "teases" the launch. Ideally I'd like to optimize a page around the product, but the client wants to try build consumer anticipation without giving too many details away. Any thoughts?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | GSI0 -
301 - should I redirect entire domain or page for page?
Hi, We recently enabled a 301 on our domain from our old website to our new website. On the advice of fellow mozzer's we copied the old site exactly to the new domain, then did the 301 so that the sites are identical. Question is, should we be doing the 301 as a whole domain redirect, i.e. www.oldsite.com is now > www.newsite.com, or individually setting each page, i.e. www.oldsite.com/page1 is now www.newsite.com/page1 etc for each page in our site? Remembering that both old and new sites (for now) are identical copies. Also we set the 301 about 5 days ago and have verified its working but haven't seen a single change in rank either from the old site or new - is this because Google hasn't likely re-indexed yet? Thanks, Anthony
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Grenadi0