Long title problem
-
I'm getting an incredible number of 4xx errors and long titles from a small website (northstarpad.com); over 13k 4xx errors and almost 20k "title element is too long". The number keeps climbing, but the site shouldn't have more than a couple hundred pages. When I look at the 4xx errors they are clearly being generated by some program since they have multiple and repeating keywords.
Here's an example:
I looked at the ftp files and plugins and couldn't see anything that could cause it, but I'm a beginner so no surprise there. Any suggestions where to look or how to fix this?
-
Thanks!
-
I can point you towards the best places online to find wordpress developers;
- https://clarity.fm/browse/technology/wordpress
- https://www.odesk.com/o/profiles/browse/skill/wordpress/
- http://premium.wpmudev.org/blog/find-wordpress-developer-designer/
Try those!
-
Hello Dan,
I've sent your message to a few web developers who apparently don't have a clue. Any suggestions on someone who could fix this?
Thanks!
-
Thanks a bunch Dan! I'm still clearly a neophyte, but am learning as I go so I appreciate your detailed responses. I'll get someone to work on the URLs right away.
It's also good to know Screaming Frog's limitations for the freebie.
-
I just wanted to clarify that the SEO plugin has nothing to do with this, and also turning all in one on/off will probably not fix anything.
Either you may have the free version of Screaming Frog which limits to 500 URLs, or you may need to adjust crawl settings - my crawl definitely was heading towards the 57k
-
The root of your issue is that there are links that are coded incorrectly
--> http://screencast.com/t/ndeKw3PL
which is resulting in infinite crawling of pages that do not really exist, and thus the same duplicate/long title tags.
For example this page is a good URL: http://northstarpad.com/category/business-portrait-metro-detroit/
But as shown in my screenshot the "Pet Photography" image links to: http://northstarpad.com/category/business-portrait-metro-detroit/pet-photography// which is a bad URL and NOT http://northstarpad.com/pet-photography/ which is where it should link.
Essentially your links should be "absolute" URLs (which show the full file path) not "relative"
--> http://screencast.com/t/koL5QX9B
You'll need to pass this to a web dev who knows how to edit your WordPress theme files.
-
I crawled the site with Screaming Frog and it only showed 475 pages instead of the 57k+ from Moz, and none of them had 404 errors. Is it possible that Moz is crawling our WordPress pages? I looked in our settings for a way to exclude that URL, but couldn't see where to do it.
We'll also try deleting/reinstalling the All in One SEO pack to see if that helps.
-
Thanks a bunch Nakul! I'll let you know if any of your suggestions help me find the problem.
-
Looks like a problem with Wordpress. Are you using any SEO Plugins like Yoast or something ? I'd suggest reaching out to your Wordpress Guy and have them look into it. It's clearly an issue, and needs to be fixed. You can also download Screaming Frog SEO Spider and crawl your website with it to see where Google is finding these links from. It could also be an issue with your Theme or Permalinks. These are the only areas I can think of. You are using the latest version of Wordpress, so you are good from that point of view. So has to be a Plugin, Theme or your Permalinks settings.
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
-
Bing result title is displaying a competitors name
When searching "Cambridge Savings Bank" which is the specific name of a bank in Bing the search results return with them as Number one with the correct URL. The issue is Bing has titled the search result "East Cambridge Savings Bank" (which is another entity all together) and still has the correct www.cambridgesavings.com URL. So basically Bing is putting another corporation's name on our website. This issue only is in Bing. Any idea how to correct this? 2.png 1.png
Technical SEO | | BOD20081 -
Google SERPs Show Different Title
Hi Guys, Can anyone please help with my situation. My domain is www.greedybins.com.au. I had title setup in every pages differently, and it has been 2 months since I made the changes. I keep checking by using site:www.greedybins.com.au in search. So far, only 1 title that been show correctly in SERPs. I used SEO Yoast before, I changed to All In One SEO Pack plugin, the titles are changing, but still not accurate as I made it. Somehow Google altered it by itself. I have tried fetch and submit sitemap couple times from Google Search Console. Could anyone please advise?
Technical SEO | | ray.soms0 -
Google Listing Brand Name as Page Title rather than actual set Title
Any search result including our website is displaying our search result title like this: "Brand Name: Partial Page Title" instead of what it should be "Page Title" (as an example). Where is the "Brand Name:" coming from? We've verified we don't have any code that could cause this, and we're blocking in robots.txt directory listings being used for our search result title/meta. This isn't happening for our competitors. Any ideas on why this is, and if it's something we can control?
Technical SEO | | Closetstogo0 -
Multi page with title with same keywords
Greetings Team, I have a webiste home page optimize for the keyword ''example apartments'' and i have included in the title but that i have another page called site.com/exampleapartments and is optimize for the keyword example apartments How can i make them different ?
Technical SEO | | WorldEscape0 -
Duplicate Title/Meta Descriptions
Hi I had some error messages in the webmaster account, stating I had duplicate title/meta descriptions. Ive since fixed it, typically how long does it take for a full crawl if Ive fixed these issues? Webmaster is still showing problems with various Title/Descriptions. Also was wondering if I should block individual pages on a large ecomerce site? EX of a Large site - http://www.stubhub.com/chicago-bears-tickets/ (Page is structure and optimized) Then you have all individual games http://www.stubhub.com/chicago-bears-tickets/bears-vs-lions-soldier-field-4077064/ they have an H1 and a meta description, should the page above be blocked from google and concentrate only on the Pain page? Thanks!
Technical SEO | | TP_Marketing0 -
How do I fix this type of duplicate page content problem?
Sample URLs with this Duplicate Page Content URLs Internal Links External Links Page Authority Linking Root Domains http://rogerelkindlaw.com/index.html 30 0 26 1 http://www.rogerelkindlaw.com/index.html 30 0 20 1 http://www.rogerelkindlaw.com/ | 1,630 | 613 | 43 | 110 | As you can see there are three duplicate pages; http://rogerelkindlaw.com/index.html http://www.rogerelkindlaw.com/index.html http://www.rogerelkindlaw.com/ What would be the best and most efficient way to fix this problem and also how to prevent this from happening? Thank you.
Technical SEO | | brianhughes0 -
WordPress E-Commerce Plugin Duplicate Content Problem
I am working on a wordpress website that uses the WP E-Commerce plugin. I am using the Yoast seo plugin but not totally familiar with it. I have noticed that WP E-Commerce creates duplicate content issues. Here's an example: http://www.domain.com/parent-category/product-url-1/ is the same content as http://www.domain.com/parent-category/child-category/product-url-1/. I was wondering which of these following options are the best solution: 1. 301 redirect the multiple instances to one page
Technical SEO | | theanglemedia
2. noindex all but one instance
3. Use the canonical tag (i've used this tag before for telling SE's to use the www version of a page but not sure if it's the appropriate for this)
4. a combination of one of these 3 options? Thanks in advance!0 -
Problem with indexed files before domain was purchased
Hello everybody, We bought this domain a few months back and we're trying to figure out how to get rid of indexed pages that (i assume) existed before we bought this domain - the domain was registered in 2001 and had a few owners. I attached 3 files from my webmasters tools, can anyone tell me how to get rid of those "pages" and more important: aren't this kind of "pages" result of some kind of "sabotage"? Looking forward to hearing your thoughts on this. Thank you, Alex Picture-5.png Picture-6.png Picture-7.png
Technical SEO | | pwpaneuro0