Spammy page titles
-
Over the last couple of weeks, I have noticed that Google aren't showing the page titles for my online shop anymore. They're set up with a third party plug-in piece of software, and while it's an old version of the software, the developer said it wouldn't be causing issues.
They have suggested that I re-write my page titles to be less spammy. The thing is, Google haven't attacked just spammy looking titles, they're just taking a swoop through my whole site and not showing any of my page titles in their search results.
I'm getting "Category Name - Shop Name" showing.
Here's some of the page titles no longer appearing and I honestly have no idea how to rewrite these to not be spammy. Are there any good articles on what's spammy and what isn't?
"Coconut oil - best tasting in Australia. Buy online from <my business="" name="">"</my>
"Discount Vitamix Blender. Best deal in Australia. Buy online from <my business="" name="">."</my>
"Natural & Organic skin care for the face | buy online in Australia from <my business="" name="">."</my>
There are others that are showing the real page titles, but I think it's only a matter of re-indexing before they're all not showing.
Any clue?
-
Hi Joanne,
I don't think it's just the spammy titles, I also think it's the length of the titles, best below 55 char.
I would suggest something simpler and but the title's you suggested as Meta Description instead.
"Coconut Oil - <you company="" name="">" would be sufficient as a title.</you>
If the domain is an Australian domain then you don't need Australia in the title, also you may want to restrict your audience to Australia perhaps, dependent on your market.
Good Luck
-
I would agree that the titles aren't particularly spammy, but also that you could re-word them slightly to make them more conversational (even a re-write for little reason can force a re-index of the tag itself which can help). This said, there really isn't anything untoward about what you've written already - the title tags take a common format and most sites do not have an issue with this.
Are you using the all-in-one SEO plug in, if you are running Wordpress?
-
Just my personal experience in case it could help:
On some WP websites using "all-in-one SEO" to rewrite titles, Google rewrites my titles again.
On other sites using "yoast seo", I don't have this problem.
I will try to reduce titles length to see if it changes something.
-
Try to keep Google's ethos in mind, sites should be meant for humans. I'd look to rewrite those titles on the basis of what is right for the user, not what is attempting to gain traction through search engines.
For instance, "Discount Vitamix Blender. Best deal in Australia. Buy online from <my business="" name="">." could become "Discounted Vitamix Blender, we provide the best deals in Australia - <business name="">".</business></my>
I wouldn't say the example titles you've given are stuffed (read 'spammy') but if you're site is full of them you'll probably get penalised. Try introducing some standard, human-only titles.
Hope 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
-
Is it important to have the brand name in all page title?
Hi Moz community, May be this is an obvious question but as i am not sure about the answer.... I prefer to ask you! If yes, is "keywords" - "BRAND NAME " the good option? If not, is there any rule? Thanks a lot, Amaury
On-Page Optimization | | adbds19730 -
Duplicate Page Content
Hey Moz Community, Newbie here. On my second week of Moz and I love it but have a couple questions regarding crawl errors. I have two questions: 1. I have a few pages with duplicate content but it say 0 duplicate URL's. How do I know what is duplicated in this instance? 2. I'm not sure if anyone here is familiar with an IDX for a real estate website. But I have this setup on my site and it seems as though all the links it generates for different homes for sale show up as duplicate pages. For instance, http://www.handyrealtysa.com/idx/mls...tonio_tx_78258 is listed as having duplicate page content compared with 7 duplicate URLS: http://www.handyrealtysa.com/idx/mls...tonio_tx_78247
On-Page Optimization | | HandyRealtySA
http://www.handyrealtysa.com/idx/mls...tonio_tx_78253
http://www.handyrealtysa.com/idx/mls...tonio_tx_78245
http://www.handyrealtysa.com/idx/mls...tonio_tx_78261
http://www.handyrealtysa.com/idx/mls...tonio_tx_78258
http://www.handyrealtysa.com/idx/mls...tonio_tx_78260
http://www.handyrealtysa.com/idx/mls...tonio_tx_78260 I've attached a screenshot that shows 2 of the pages that state duplicate page content but have 0 duplicate URLs. Also you can see somewhat about the idx duplicate pages. rel="canonical" is functioning on these pages, or so it seems when I view the source code from the page. Any help is greatly appreciated. skitch.png0 -
Can you canonical from one domain page to a different domain page
We are a boating site and have our main site with all it's products. We have an engine section within our main site. But we also have an outside domain, specific to a certain manufacturer of engines. So we want our customers to still find the engine information for this manufacturer within our main site, as well as find the manufacturer targeted engine site in the SERPS. My question is this: Can I canonical those pages within our main site to pages on the outside domain? Or does are canonicals to be used only within the same domain? Thanks,
On-Page Optimization | | tdawson090 -
Home Page Keywords not Ranking and Assigned to Inside Pages
Hi, thank you for taking the time to read this. We have a few websites with the same problem. I will use http://www.prepared-meals.com as an example: The home page was ranking on page one for keyword "Prepared Meals". The site is about 6 months old. We use the Moz page optimizer on all pages of our websites to score an A rating. Recently we found the home page is no longer showing up in search results and the keyword "prepared meals" now points to an inside page that is not relevant: http://www.prepared-meals.com/Senior-Meals/Moms-Meals-Reviews.html this page shows up for Prepared Meals around page 15 in Google results. We have read keywords in the URL might be the issue, even though the page optimizer in MOZ says to do that. We are wondering if this is the issue or there is some other problem we are not aware of. Again, thank you for you for your time. -Craig
On-Page Optimization | | CraigSWD0 -
Penalty for Changing Home Page Title Tags
Hey Mozzers I'm certain of the answer to this question, however I wanted to get some input from the experts in Moz-land to hopefully provide some additional perspective. I recently disagree with a client's assertion that there is some penalty Google levels for changing the title tags of your home page. Now, I understand changing the title tags can influence serp rankings, however, is anyone aware of some penalty Google levels for simply changing the title tags? Most of what I've read and experienced has people changing them all the time without some phantom penalty. It seems to me a problem of correlation = causality, in that people often attribute a drop to an action that may not have actually been the cause. Anyway, if you have any particular insight on this top I would appreciate it greatly. thanks!
On-Page Optimization | | BrandLabs0 -
Why are some of page indexed and others not
I have created a site structure like this: domain/for-sale/brand domain/for-sale/brand-model domain/for-sale/brand-model/pg1 domain/for-sale/brand-model/pg2 domain/for-sale/brand-model/pg3 etc.... I cannot understand why the domain/for-sale/brand-model does not seem to be indexed, yet the domain/for-sale/brand-model/pg6 is? This is a new site, but I cannot understand why this URL would be indexed without the others... Any ideas? My home pages has links to the domain/for-sale/brand, this page has links to domain/for-sale/brand-model1, domain/for-sale/brand-model2 etc, each of these pages have links to domain/for-sale/brand-model/pg1, domain/for-sale/brand-model/pg2 etc...
On-Page Optimization | | MirandaP0 -
Should I worry about duplicate titles on pages where there is paginated content?
LivingThere.com is a real estate search site and many of our content pages are "search result" - ish in that a page often provides all the listings that are available and this may go on for multiple pages. For example, this is a primary page about a building: http://livingthere.com/building/31308-Cocoa-Exchange Because of the number of listings, the listings paginate to a second page: http://livingthere.com/building/31308-Cocoa-Exchange?MListings_page=2 Both pages have the same Page Title. Is this a concern? If so is there a "best practice" for giving paginated content different titles? Thanks! Nate
On-Page Optimization | | nate1230 -
Page speed tools
Working on reducing page load time, since that is one of the ranking factors that Google uses. I've been using Page Speed FireFox plugin (requires FireBug), which is free. Pretty happy with it but wondering if others have pointers to good tools for this task. Thanks...
On-Page Optimization | | scanlin0