Title Tag Change - Drop in Organic Placement?
-
I've been working on increasing CTR my changing the title tag & meta descriptions. Has anyone ever noticed a drop in organic SERPS from doing so? Even if CTR goes up?
It seems to me that if the CTR goes up and user experience in that way is improved these changes should yield an increase in the average position. Would you agree?
Thank you!!
-
Wow, thank you all for your insights. I really appreciate the feedback.
I have not been removing the primary key phrase the page is optimized for. However I have removed the business name which also is a key phrase. For years my title tag formula was “key phrase | business name”
ie. Las Vegas Wedding Chapels | Vegas Weddings.
Using this example what I’ve done is kept Las Vegas wedding chapels dropped the post ( | ) and Vegas Weddings (business name) to utilize those extra character spaces for a more enticing title tag to increase click through rate. In some cases I may have dropped the Las in Las Vegas to also create more space.
Questions:
1. Any additional feedback with this new information?
2. What do you think about the potential for google seeing the initial formula as keyword stuffing even though it is the business name? Vegas Weddings happens to be one of the most searched keyphrases.
I am not certain that the average positions actually dropped as a result of these changes. It may have been related to a big misfortune we had with google my business listings earlier this year. I will look even deeper into this to see if i can make more precise conclusions from the statistics. Either way all this information is highly valued.
While Im on that topic, does anyone actually know if the search console/google analytics average position stat does or does not factor in the organic placement within google my business?
Thank you all so so much!
-
Leslie, while in theory you are right, Google is still using an algorithm that is very much keyword-driven, and while changing the Meta Description should not affect rankings, changing the Meta Title can and often will have an impact.
I may be old school but I believe the Meta Title should be target keywords focused first, and CTR second, while the Meta Description should be CTR focused first and target keywords second.
If you changed Meta Titles that removed or partially removed the target keywords for those specific pages, I would recommend you add them back. Your Meta Descriptions with the new CTR focus should be ok to stay what they are.
-
It is always possible that a title tag change with decrease the relevance and optimization of a page for some keywords. Changing the title tag can also change the click-through rate.
A few years ago, we were doing some aggressive title tag experiments. We were changing title tags every few weeks on about 80 pages. On about the fifth iteration, all of those pages dropped out of the top ten and stayed out of the top ten for a few months. Fortunately they recovered, we waited a while, changed to our best test results, and the pages have been ranking great for years.
-
I never saw a drop in Rankings when I was changing the Description. Couldn't be, it's not a (direct) ranking factor. But of course, changing titles should be done carefully.
What seems to be better for CTR sometimes is worse for SEO. The title is one of the most important on-page-factors, so yes - could be the reason.
Maybe you should change one title page with clear losts results and organic traffic back, send to google and check later again. Then you will see, if changing was the reason, I think it was.
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
-
Value of URL Changes
Hi Guys, I have a question. Each product listed on my webstie has product number like /product.php?id=3624. After I spent many hours with MOZ, I figured out that this approach is wrong and I should use the product name as URL to achieve better SEO performance. Now I am planing to change the URL generating algoritm but should I do it for existing products. Some of them have already been linked to external websites. I am thinking to create mirror URLs but this may cause rather damage on my website. Do you know what is the right answer? Best, Tony
On-Page Optimization | | Threeding.com0 -
Unkown H1-Tag on my webshop
Dear community, I have a unknown and undetecable H1-tag on my webshop. I'm currently optimizing my webshop and get stuck by two H1-tags on every page. Does anyone know where i can remove this H1-tag? My webshop URL: www.rijwielcashencarry.nl Thanks!
On-Page Optimization | | rijwielcashencarry0400 -
Image Alt and Title?
I'm building a quotations website. Each quotation will have between 1 and 5 images (picture quotes) associated with it. The images will be featured as thumbnails (image gallery) on the quote post itself. How should I handle the image alt and title tags so that I rank better for a quote in image search, and also strengthen the ranking signals on the quote post itself? Take for example, a photo of a beach and a photo of the sun. Both have the same quote on it: "Laughter is an instant vacation." Should the quote itself go into the alt tag? while the description of the image goes into the title? Or should the quote go into the title? Would this be correct? Title: Beach with children playing in the sand. Alt: "Laughter is an instant vacation." Title: Sun shining in the sky. Alt: "Laughter is an instant vacation." What about if the quote is very long? Google has said they like when the alt and title tags are short.
On-Page Optimization | | JABacchetta0 -
Optimize Page Title - Advice
I am currently going through my site and re-doing the page titles to try and optimize each specific product's page. I know that having the part number as the first piece of text in the title is the best practice. My question is, if i add a bunch of terms to the title, after the part number, is that taking away from the important part (the product number)? For example, my product is Audi A4. The term i want to optimize for is Audi A4. Which would be the better title for ranking purposes? A) Audi A4 | Automobile or B) Audi A4 | Automobile | 4 Cylinder | Made in Germany Thanks for the advice!
On-Page Optimization | | Prime851 -
Organic Landing Pages...
For one of our sites (fastcubes.com) I noticed our landing pages were ranking and getting a few organic visits. Considering they were made specifically for PPC, I thought maybe we should create landing pages that would not be present in the navigation of the site but for the purpose of optimizing for keyword variations. For example work station cubicles vs office workstation. We have a page optimized for office workstation but having another optimized for work station cubicles is redundant. Would it be a good idea to create this as a page that is not present in the navigation for the sole person of hopefully being ranked and getting traffic for that specific keyword? Thank you in advance for your help!!
On-Page Optimization | | DevonIntl0 -
Page title
So if we have a main category page on our site (mines an ecommerce site), do we go for more than that main keyword phrase for that category of products, or is it better to just keep it by itself, and not utilize the 65-70 characters available?
On-Page Optimization | | azguy0 -
Should I let Google index tags?
Should I let Google index tags? Positive? Negative Right now Google index every page, including tags... looks like I am risking to get duplicate content errors? If thats true should I just block /tag in robots.txt Also is it better to have as many pages indexed by google or it's should be as lees as possible and specific to the content as much as possible. Cheers
On-Page Optimization | | DiamondJewelryEmpire0 -
Change in Product Name
My site - http://www.guru99.com/quick-test-professional-qtp-tutorial.html Currently caters to an automation testing product from HP called Quick Test Professional popularly know and searched as QTP Recently HP changed the product name from QTP to HP Functional Test. Considering this , what do I do with exiting QTP pages and how do I optimize the site moving ahead...
On-Page Optimization | | krishrun0