Advanced Title Tags
-
Looking for some advanced help here. I've been reading a lot of conflicting information on this, and I am hoping someone can clear this up.
My question is regarding length and complexity of title tags. For example, my top level keywords are:
IT Support, IT Services, IT Outsourcing, Help Desk, etc.
I also have pages for many modified versions ex: IT Support Services, Managed IT Services, etc.
I have robust pages for each. Should my title tag be:
IT Support | CSM Corp. - Simple
IT Support Company | CSM Corp. (Picks up a longer tail)
or
IT Support | Secondary Keyword | CSM Corp.
Does adding secondary keywords dilute the strength of the primary keyword?
If long is preferable, can someone give me an example using "IT Support"?
-
Paul is like the cleanup hitter. We all get on base and he drives em home.
-
AHA! Figured it out. You're using a responsive slider, Rahul. That means the slider (and its images) get resized depending on the size of the browser window.
Those of us seeing blurry images are using a larger browser window, causing the images to be up-sized and going blurry.
To get around this, you're going to have to use larger images for the slider to keep the bigger browser windows sharp. (This is one of the classic tradeoffs of responsive design - the files sizes actually have to be bigger, even though they may get displayed on a small phone.
You'll need to arrive at a happy medium, and your analytics can help here. Ideally, you want to check the average browser window size for desktop users, but that takes some extra customization Instead, at leas look at the average screen size of your desktop users and make an estimate of the typical browser window they use. Then check what size the slider images are for those screen sizes. Then redo the images to look crisp at that size. Compress them as much as possible while still maintaining quality, so you don't kill the file size.
That way, small screens will get the image as compressed as possible, but large screens will still see a large enough version of the image to be crisp.
Hope that makes sense?
Paul
-
Your figures are off, Rahul. Using the example of the IT Group photo ( the men & women standing in the middle of the hallway of servers-first image) the slider image is 337 pixels high, but the image file feeding it is only 250px high.
So the image is being up-sized by over 30%. That amount of upscaling will blur any image. Need to go back to the original image and recreate a new image for the slider that is 337 pixels high (or whatever the slider is actually using - I just used a rough on-screen ruler for my measurements so could be off a couple of pixels)
Paul
-
It looks to me like you need to increase the size of the images, Rahul. The images' dimensions are smaller than the way they are being rendered in the slider, which means the slider is having to up-size them to display. Up-sizing an image like that always makes it more blurry as data must be interpolated. (Doing this up-sizing in an image editor like PhotoShop will always be higher quality, but even then some blur is inevitable).
Best to redo the images from their originals at the size the slider is actually using them.
Paul
NOTE! Image resolution has nothing to do with how images will display on the web. Image dimensions (height and width in pixels) are the only thing that matters.
-
Can you clarify? I am using Layer Slider, which uses a mix of text and graphics. You can see it at www.csm-corp.com. The sliders are generally 250 high, and the images (people) started off at 300 high. They needed to be scaled down to fit, and they don't encompass the whole slider.
What am I doing wrong?
-
Hi Rahul,
If your slider if 800px wide and 400px tall for example, make your images and art the exact same size.
Downsizing a 1000px wide image to 800px wide will maintain crispness.
Upsizing a 600px wide image to 800px wide will blur it.
If your images and art are typically smaller than your slider, reduce the size of your slider to accommodate your content.
-
No offense taken. They are high res. The slider is blurring them. Should I reduce the size of the slider?
-
In your AdWords account, don't forget to use the Keyword Tool.
It isn't the end-all be-all, but it will definitely get you on the right path.
P.S. I looked up your site and I just want to add a bit of criticism from a user's standpoint (please take it in the spirit in which it is intended.): All your graphics on that front page banner are... blurry. Get 'em high-res if you can cause it hurt my eyes to look at and I'm sure I won't be the only one bothered by that. Not trying to be a jerk, just trying to be helpful.
-
Rahul,
I've found that using too many keywords in the title tag will dilute the main keyword, but the jury is out on that one whether it's 100% true.
Are you running a ppc campaign? PPC campaigns will often reveal the magic keyword that converts the best. Once you have this data, you can experiment with variations of the term to form the best possible title tag that revolves around conversions rather than traffic.
Jerry also has a good point about looking to see what competitors are targeting. They wouldn't be targeting those keywords if they weren't profitable -
You probably have already done this, but do you have any keywords that are more actionable? Such as "IT Service Reviews?" I just did a few quick searches for those high level keywords, and they keep producing research based results (i.e. Wikipedia, etc).
Anyway, the best tactic is to take a look at the top 5-10 prospects for your specific vertical, and see what they are doing. If they you can find a pattern in those title tags, then you can determine your strategy based 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
-
How to come up with the best title tags?
Hi Guys, I know title tags is one of the most important things that google looks at, any tips or advice around how I can go about improving the ones I have currently? I'm ranking pretty decent for all domains, slowly but surely, my main keywords are online psychics, online psychic readings, chat psychics, chat readings, tarot readings, and psychic readings. Any advice would be much appreciated, or direct me to resources I can look into helping me get onto the right path. my website is http://bit.ly/1KTbWg0 Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | edward-may0 -
Should I be using meta robots tags on thank you pages with little content?
I'm working on a website with hundreds of thank you pages, does it make sense to no follow, no index these pages since there's little content on them? I'm thinking this should save me some crawl budget overall but is there any risk in cutting out the internal links found on the thank you pages? (These are only standard site-wide footer and navigation links.) Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | GSO0 -
Google stripping down Page Titles
When viewing pages indexed by Google, I've noticed the Page Titles have be down stripped as follows: Actual Page Title: CITY Keyword - STATE keyword
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | SpadaMan
Google Indexed Page Title: 1 - Domain.com None of the keywords in the actual PAGE TITLE are present; all words have been replaced with a random digit -domain.com. We launched a new version of the site several months back.. Any Idea on what can be causing this?0 -
Bad use of the Rel="canonical" tag
Google is currently ranking my category page instead of our homepage for our key term and we would rather have our homepage rank for the term. Would it be a bad idea to rel="canonical" our category page to our homepage? Our homepage is optimized to rank for the keyword and has more PR than our category page. However, I don't really know if this will have negative repercussions. Thanks, Jason
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Jason_3420 -
Accidently added a nofollow, noindex tag and then...
Hey guys, My first post here and ironically highlights a ridiculously stupid mistake! Ok, here's the deal... I started building links to one of my new page on a fairly good, old site (DA = >35). Before starting to build links, I added fresh new content, and while doing that, I accidentally added a "nofollow" and "noindex" tag to the page! Guess what, google DID de-index the page ! So the questions is (and YES, I did change the meta tags): Will google re-index the page with some good linking? Will it treat the page as a new, fresh page even though it was present for over a year? I had already started link building to that page, and now technically the links are pointing to a page that does not exist in the index, so once it does get re-indexed, will Google FLAG it as having too many links? Would I be ranking it as a new page? Will its previous ranking (for very few keywords) will come back? Thanks and Regards, Amod
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | bonusjonathan0 -
Updating Titles - How long do you wait for Google to pick it up... any tips?
Hi We recently trialed some new page titles which seriously helped our CTR on serps, so we thought we would roll them backwards to our other product pages, only about 5% of the SERPS show the new titles. Do I need to change more on the page to get google to notice these changes?Or just hold on and wait?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | xoffie0 -
Hierachy in a Title Tag Needed?
When coding the title tags of a website, is it important to note the hierarchy of the website so the search engine can find that page? So, for example, the title tag would be, for a subcategory: Webpage Subcategory>Category>Website name Does this help the search engine rankings at all? Or can the search engines figure out the hierarchy by reading a sitemap or the HTML readable navigation? Then you could focus on the descriptive keywords of the subcategory page for the title tag. Also, should you always include the site name in the title tag?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ConnellyPartners0 -
Should I check Use noindex for Tag Archives?
I have a page indexed > (http://mysite.com/mypost) and also http://mysite.com/tag/mypost The same post shows up twice, one with /tag/ one without when I search site:http://mysite.com
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | vinner-280241
Is this a duplicate content?? Can I get penalized for this? In the All in one plugin should I check Use noindex for Tag Archives to avoid this or doesn't matter.
Thanks0