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.
Title and Heading Tags
-
Firstly I would like to comment on how helpful this site is. I haven't posted much before but have been reading tonnes of answers for many months now and have been finding it really useful.
I used the SEOmoz scanner and the main problem highlighted was duplicate content so I started to add 'customer product reviews' I had received and unique 'further information' to each page (hopefully this was the right thing to do to solve duplicate content! : ) )
Then I looked at heading and title tags. Currently I set title tags for each product page to be "Brand Name- Product Name" but after doing some research we are thinking of putting Keyword Description of Product | Product Name | Brand Name (around 60 characters long).
So is this the advised thing to do and create unique titles that are relevant to each specific product page for over 200 pages we have?
In addition, any advice on setting optimum
tags would be great. We keep reading varying tips online. I gather ideally h1 needs to be a shorter keyword rich version of the title tag?
Many Thanks
-
Thank you for the help and advice- I really appreciate it. I still can't seem to decide the best course of action for the titles/headers.
A little background incase you can help/advise:
We sell 5 types of widgets. And each of these 5 headings have 50 or so products each. At the moment the title is Brand Name | Product name and the header is just Brand| Motto for all. The problem is making each of the 50 or so titles different as they all fit in one broad category and it is hard to define them further e.g. setting one widget as 'space saving widget' but the problem is about 10/50 products fit that description so I don't want customer thinking that particular one is the only space saving one we have (I hope you guys understand what I mean here)
In this scenario would it be advisable just to stick with product names?
-
Hi Jannkuzel - as far as duplicate content, it depends on what pages are being tagged as duplicate content as far as what you do to correct. For instance, the tools in SEOmoz tell me I have dup content for about 50-60 pages on one of my client's sites, but the reason is because each of the URL's is the same except for a product ID (&pid=540985). Each id loads slightly different content into a few areas of the page. So, the system thinks these are all the same page. These pages are not important pages on the site so I'm not that worried about them. Without knowing what is on your pages that are being tagged as duplicate content, it's hard to tell you what to do to correct it. Generally, you are on the right track in that you want to change the content on each page to be different enough (keep in mind that the info that is spiderable needs to be unique, pics, iframes, etc don't make much of a difference) that it won't get tagged as duplicate content.
As the title tag is the most important on-page ranking factor, you want your targeted keyword to be at the very beginning of the tag, with as close to an exact match of the keyword as possible. Even though it's a pain, yes, you would want to give each of your 200 pages unique title tags. It's fine to put the Brand name at the end, that's normally where I put mine.
H1 - is actually not quite as important as it used to be, but is still very important. H1 doesn't really have any relation to the Title Tag. Bottom line is that again, you want as close to an exact match of your main targeted keyword(s) in the H1 for sure. Also helps to work them into your other header tags as well (h2,3,4). Find a balance between making it legible and working in your most important targeted terms. If at all possible, use the exact term you are trying to target. Positioning (beginning or end of tag) doesn't matter as much as it does in the Title Tag.
Let me know if this helps!
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
-
Affect of ™ and ® in title for SEO
I am looking at adding the trademark and rights reserved symbols to some of my titles. I think this might help with click through rate. From what I have found, this shouldn't have an affect on SEO unless it makes the title too long. Is this correct? Stephen
On-Page Optimization | | stephen.volker1 -
What is the best tag to use for your Logo ?
Hi, I'm wondering what is the best tag to use on your logo. We're currently using h1 and i want to scrap that ASAP.
On-Page Optimization | | Alex.harvey.Cortex0 -
Multiple H1 tags on Squarespace blog page?
Hi All, I use Squarespace and while running my site (https://www.growmassagebusiness.com) through programs am seeing that my blog posts are being seen as one page with multiple H1 tags. I read through the SS help desk and found back in 2015 someone wrote that it's not a bit deal b/c of HTML5 and that the search engines will read each blog post as a sub-page. I'm not so sure about that and wondering what the experts think? If that is screwy then I'm considering possibly making each blog post it's own page rather than using their blog posting format.
On-Page Optimization | | rajam0 -
Less Tags better for SEO?
I am currently reviewing my strategy when it comes to categories and tags on my site. Having been no-indexed for some time, and having many tags with just one entry I am thinking that this is not optimal for SEO purposes. This is what I am planning: Categories - Change these to Index, but only after adding a hundred words or so by way of introduction (see this example - https://www.besthostnews.com/news/hosting/a-small-orange-news/). With the categories I am thinking of highlighting key articles as well to improve link juice distribution to older articles that are important. Tags - About half my tags have only 1 entry, with a few more just having 2 entries. I am thinking of deleting all tags with just one entry, and trying to merge those with just two or 3 entries where it makes sense to do so. I will keep these as no-index, but I think this will mean more optimal distribution of link juice within the site. I would appreciate your thoughts \ suggestions on the best practices here.
On-Page Optimization | | TheWebMastercom0 -
Is there any benefit to removing brand name from the title tag?
I just signed up for Moz recently, and have noticed that in my crawl errors, I have hundreds of issues with my title tag being too long. My business is selling prints for landscape/travel/nature photography, and I've built these pages dynamically to where the title tag for pages selling individual photos has the title of the photo for sale followed by a hyphen and then the brand name. The same goes for gallery pages "Gallery Name | Brand Name". Would it be worth it to shorten the title tags by removing the brand name from these pages? Or will that actually harm more than help? Thanks in advance!
On-Page Optimization | | shannmg10 -
Colons in title tag?
Does Google view the colon as a keyword separator like it does with the pipe (|) character? Currently, our site automatically constructs the title tag based on the page name given by the user. Long ago, we started using the colon character to visually separate the brand & model of the product from the size, and as a result, all of our title tags have been constructed this way. This was done more to make it easier to read for humans than for search engines. My question is - should I consider getting rid of the colon from our title tags? To give more info, our website sells tires. So, for any given model of tire, there might be 25-100 different individual sizes. The tags are constructed as follows: (brand)(model) : (size). Here's an example from our site: GENERAL ALTIMAX ARCTIC : 225/45R17 91Q The brand is General Tire, the model is the Altimax Arctic and the size is 225/45R17 91Q Since this entire string really constitutes the full product name, should I remove the colon so that Google views it that way? Or, since I have used a colon instead of a pipe, will Google simply ignore it and treat the entire string as one keyword phrase?
On-Page Optimization | | kcourtem0 -
Category page canonical tag
I know this question has been asked a few times on here but I'm looking for very specific advice. Currently when you go to a category, say http://www.bronterose.co.uk/range.html, a canonical tag is added to the head of the page. There are plenty of "variant" pages which carry the same tag, for example: /range.html?p=2
On-Page Optimization | | crichardson9
/range.html?p=3
/range.html?dir=asc&order=price
/range.html?dir=asc&limit=all&order=price Is it wise to push the "link juice" for each of these variant pages to the top level page? Or should each variant page have its own unique canonical tag? After reading many blog posts, guides and papers I'm truly confused! Any general guidance or recommendations would be much appreciated. Chris.1 -
Does Title Tag have to be in the HEAD tag?
We are using templates that load the same header for every page. I'd like to just include a different title tag in the "body" template of each page. If I was to do this, does it affect SEO at all?
On-Page Optimization | | moziodavid0