How different does each page tilte need to be?
-
I've got a site that is all about wood countertops. There are a few ways people can find info on wood tops.
- (main) wood countertops
- (main) butcher block
- butcher block counters
- wood counters
- hardwood countertops
- etc.
For the most part I want to rank for the two top key phrases because they pretty much cover all the other basis with google being as smart as it is. So they question is how different should each page title be?
Examples:
- Wood Countertops - Butcher Block Counters | by J. Aaron = index page
- Wood Counter tops - Butcher Block Counters - About Us | J. Aaron = about us page
- Cleaning Butcher Block - Wood Countertop Maintenance | J. Aaron = care & maintenance page
Would it be OK to use:
<title>Wood Countertops - Butcher Block Counters | by J. Aaron</title>
as the template for the whole site with the addition of the actual page subject as an additional piece of the sentence, like example 2 or would that be too similar? Also is that a good idea or should I commit to optimizing each page for a different key phrase? If so would you optimize the home page for the most searched for phrase and let the other pages back it up with the other search terms?
-
Hi Josh,
Keeping in mind I don't know anything about wood counters and kitchen islands, I would make this observation about your title:
<title>walnut kitchen island with undermount sink and tung-oil wood seal(65)er | J. Aaron</title>
1. Too long. You've only got about 65 spaces for a title, then Google clips off the rest. I limit titles to 60 spaces or less.
2. You've got what appears to be 2 related keywords (which you could probably rank for on one page) and a 3rd unrelated keyword in "tung oil wood seal."
3. "Walnut Kitchen Island" looks like a good long tail keyword to me (kitchen island would be short while adding the walnut is a longer tail qualifier).
4. The longer the tail, the more you qualify the buyer.
5. I tighter title would be: "Walnut Kitchen Island with Undermount Sink by J. Aaron"
6. Depending on your site structure you might have a page with a variety of Walnut Kitchen Islands on it with a link to a separate page with an undermount sink (which is what this revised title would suggest).
6. "Tongue Oil Wood Seal" seems like it should be on a page about how to protect and maintain your countertops.
7. Putting your store's name or your name on the page title is fine and standard practice when brand building. Some put it on the back as you do, some on the front and some not at all. If there is room, I put our store's name on the title, if not I leave it off.
8. If you're optimizing for local business, its fine to put your city, state or combination in the title.
9. I've got our store name and street address in the footer so it shows on every page. For pages I really want to kick butt locally on, I put the city, state in the title, otherwise I leave it off and let the footer do the work.
-
So you're saying as the pages get more dedicated I should up the description level like
<title>walnut kitchen island with undermount sink and tung-oil wood sealer | J. Aaron</title> (Is it a real good idea to keep the " | J. Aaron" in every title or can that go away. It's not like it's a brand that people know or even a product that people associate with brands at all.)
What if I have several pictures of very similar products with their own pages. Should I just set one up as the master page and put a canonical tag on the other "walnut kitchen island tops with undermount sinks and tung-oil sealers" to link to the master page? I can separate them out as much as possible like the ones with distressing would be different and the ones without sinks could be different.
-
Thanks everyone. I'll make a few changes and see what happens. I'm trying not to over optimize but I still want to do the best with this portion of the SEO as possible.
This is a bit off subject but do any of you know why when I put new content on the site via blog post or new pages I'm not getting a google alert. I've done searches for that page and know google is indexing them but never get the alert. I used to but haven't for a while. Should that be a concern?
Thanks again.
-
Hi Joshua,
I would second the preceding replies and offer this: before you implement your page titles I would recommend three things:
1. Develop a better understanding of keyword research and the difference between broad, phrase and exact match as they relate to long vs short tail keywords.
2. Develop a better understanding of structuring your title with keywords. For example,"<title>Wood Countertops - Butcher Block Counters | by J. Aaron</title>" looks to me more like a breadcrumb than a homepage title. At face value, I would think that title would link to a page about Butcher Block Counters (which is a specific type of wood counter that would have its own page).
3. Wood countertops is a very broad short-tail term - probably very early in the buying cycle and very difficult to hit page 1. If you're a local wood countertop shop, I would optimize locally for immediate results while you build your domain authority so you can rank for these shorter tail terms.
-
Your title tags will appear as a clickable link in the google search results.
That title should clearly describe the contents of the page that the visitor will see upon clicking.
If you do that and have duplicate title tags then there is probably a good justification for combining those pages.
Don't forget to optimize for some kitchen, wood species, photos, colors, etc. terms. The diversity of queries for this type of traffic is enormous.
-
I believe every page should be different so its clear to google that each page hs unique value and belongs in the index - I would think if had to pick which term I want google to show this page for vs the home page and use that as the title and be clear to google this is the page by not using the title again
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
-
Listing all services on one page vs separate pages per service
My company offers several generalized categories with more specific services underneath each category. Currently the way it's structured is if you click "Voice" you get a full description of each voice service we offer. I have a feeling this is shooting us in the foot. Would it be better to have a general overview of the services we offer on the "Voice" page that then links to the specified service? The blurb about the service on the overview page would be unique, not taken from the actual specific service's page.
On-Page Optimization | | AMATechTel0 -
Duplicate Home Page
Hi, I have a question around best practise on duplicate home pages. The /index.aspx page is showing up as a top referrer in my analytics. I have the rel=canonical tag implemented for the www.mysite.com on both pages. Do I need to 301 the /index.aspx to the mysite.com? I have a lot of links pointing to the /index.aspx (half of those are coming from the mysite.com). www.mysite.com/index.aspx www.mysite.com Many thanks Jon
On-Page Optimization | | JonRaubenheimer0 -
Search Pages outranking Product Pages
A lot of the results seen in the search engines for our site are pages from our search results on our site, i.e. Widgets | Search Results This has happened over time and wasn't intentional, but in many cases we see our search results pages appearing over our actual product pages in search, which isn't ideal. Simply blocking indexing of these pages via robots wouldn't be ideal, at least all at once as we would have that period of time where those Search Results pages would be offline and our product pages would still be at the back of ranking. Any ideas on a strategy to replace these Search Results with the actual products in a way that won't hurt us too bad during the transition? Or a way to make the actual product pages rank above the search results? Currently, it is often the opposite. Thanks! Craig
On-Page Optimization | | TheCraig0 -
Too Many On-Page Links
If a page has more than 100 links, rather than splitting up the page into multiple pages, is it ok to use name="robots" content="noindex, follow" />? The page in question lists links to articles so the page itself isn't that important to appear in serps, but the articles are the helpful content pages: www.ides.com/articles/processing/injection-molding/
On-Page Optimization | | Prospector-Plastics0 -
On-Page Report Card
How long will it take to see the results of changes made on my pages based on the On-Page Report Card recommendations? On-Page Report Card
On-Page Optimization | | sansonj0 -
Does Too Many On-Page Links on a Page Really Matters?
Does Too Many On-Page Links on a Page Really Matters? Especially if they are pointing to internal page?
On-Page Optimization | | AppleCapitalGroup1 -
How do you fix on page SEO ?
I have been trying to push my foundation website in organic search results for competitive keywords , i have been not been so consistent in raking our website in top search results of Google. can some one recommend the guidelines and activities which can really push my websites to Google first page. More Info: about our foundation We are the worlds largest school meal run ngo in the world feeding over 1.3 million school children in India Wesite url www.akshayapatra.org
On-Page Optimization | | AkshayaPatra0 -
100 links on one page
we're recommended 100 links or less on one page. is the 100 links including header and footer links?
On-Page Optimization | | jallenyang0