Mobile - incorrect brand capitalisation
-
Hi there,
Has anyone experienced incorrect capitalisation of their brand on mobile - we've tried lots of different things to correct it, but so far none have worked. Any ideas (issue is only on mobile)?
Thanks
Vic
-
Hi David,
Thanks for the response we'll discuss trying that! We actually only have the .com version which is why you're only seeing that version.
Thanks again for your input I will let you know whether that has any effect.
Vic
-
Hi Vic,
I've had a look at the site and have the following notes:
When I search for the main keywords in the title, the brand name displays in lowercase as it should.
When i search for the brand name, Google ignores the page title and shows only the brand name and includes capitalized letters.
The other issue here is that it ranks the .com domain instead of the .co.uk domain. I used a UK IP address and Google.co.uk and still got the .com ranking for the brand search.
The reason for this is that there are no hreflang tags in place between the two sites. Are you also seeing this? (I want to make sure it's not just me!)
With the branding change on mobile, the only thing I would try is moving the brand name to the front of the title tag for the homepage. I always include branding at the front of homepage titles because Google tends to re-write them that way. I know that's not the case here with how this site appears on desktop search, but everything else looks fine and I would recommend giving it a try!
I'll be interested to see if that solves the problem.
Cheers,
David
-
Hi Vic,
Any chance you could PM me the site? I'm happy to take a look instead of taking a stab in the dark.
Cheers,
David
-
Hi there,
Thanks for the reply, the site is actually responsive so I'm not sure it can be that. Also the brand name is all lower case and Google is actually adding capitals at the beginning and in the middle, our URLs are all lower case, we don't have our brand as an H1 though, do you think this might be worth a try?
Any other ideas or things to try are very welcome!
Thanks for your help
Vic
-
Hi,
Thanks for the reaponse, it's the page title in the SERPs, we tried adding company name as we wanted but it's still appearing incorrectly. Will have another look at back links.
Thanks,
Vic
-
Hi Vic,
Sounds like you are talking about a mobile-specific version of your website and not a responsive website.
I've saw this problem recently and it was because the mobile version of the site was not canonicalized properly to the desktop site.
In this case, the mobile page titles were left blank and Google generated their own by using H1 headings and the URL for branding. When the mobile site was canonicalized correctly, Google quickly started using the same specified titles as the desktop site.
To get this working properly, your desktop website should have something that looks like this:
href="http://m.example.com/page-1">
And your mobile site should have something like this:
This example was taken from Google's Mobile SEO configurations guide.
Check if you have this in place. If not, add it!
The only other time I've seen an issue like this was when the brand name wasn't actually in the page title. Google took what was specified as the WordPress 'Site name' and added that the end of all titles that had no branding.
By what you said, it sounded like you DO have branding in your titles, but if you don't, definitely add it the way want it to appear and don't make Google guess.
Cheers,
David
-
Hi Vic,
Are you experiencing this problem in the way Google shows your website's URL or in the mention of the company name in the title tag shown on the SERP?
Unfortunately, I don't have a definite answer for you as to why Google seems to be re-writing it. Like you mentioned, I would go through your backlinks and see how other websites are linking to you. Likewise, I would make sure your title tags and meta descriptions have your company name capitalized exactly as you want them to be shown. To quickly see a list of all the title tags and meta descriptions on your entire website I recommend running a crawl through Screaming Frog. You can access the software here.
I hope this helps!
-
Hi,
So it's how our brand appears on mobile in Google, yes it's looks as though they are, but we're trying to correct it, I guess the question really is why they're re-writing it. Do you know why this might happen? As I mentioned we've tried quite a few things to correct this but none have been successful. One theory was around anchor text people use to link to us - is that likely to be the cause?
Vic
-
Hi Vic,
Where is this occurring when you see it? Is Google perhaps re-writing?
-Andy
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
-
Optimizing shop content for desktop and mobile users
When arranging content on a shop category page I place a descriptive optimized opening paragraph of text above products. On desktop this shows both the opening text and the products above the fold (visible here https://www.scamblermusic.com/royalty-free-music-downloads/ - also shown on the screen grab below). The text may well be ignored by most visitors (who will likely be drawn straight to product images) but it still serves a purpose. dekstop.png When it comes to smaller mobile screens I have started to disable the opening paragraph of text (above the products) and instead place a copy of it below the products, (screen grab below). This keeps the optimized text on the page, but it means that mobile users instantly see products rather than having to scroll past text that they may see as inconvenient. mobile.png I'm conscious of the fact that Google indexes mobile content first, and it also doesn't like duplicate content. I therefore have three questions relating to this: Will moving the optimized text content below all the products to the bottom of the page devalue it (I understand important content should be as near to the top of page as possible)? Although the optimized paragraph of text only displays once on desktop (at the top of the page) and once on mobile (at the bottom of the page) it is actually visible twice in the source code - does this count as duplication, and could it therefore hurt the performance of the page in SERPs? If this practice does cause issues, is there an ideal way to optimize content on pages (especially shop category pages) that doesn't require mobile users to scroll through text before seeing products? Lastly, on topic optimized landing pages that feature product promotions such as this one - https://www.scamblermusic.com/royalty-free-music-downloads/music-licensing-scotland/ - I wonder if it is best to lead with an optimized text introduction above product images, or better to place the products right at the top of the page for immediate impact, then follow this with the content/article/blog post? Many thanks for any advice offered.
On-Page Optimization | | JCN-SBWD0 -
Branded Product Dropping from 1st position. Why?
Hi All, I have a branded product that's always ranked 1st. It's a popular product which attracts the majority of our website's traffic. Now it's suddenly dropped from 1st to 20th. Can anyone advise me why this has happened? I've made no radical changes in the last month. keyword: Wattbike Atom Url:https://wattbike.com/gb/product/atom atom
On-Page Optimization | | WattbikeSEO0 -
Is it OK to shorten your brand name in your title tags
If your title tag is over 55 characters, is it generally OK or good practice to abbreviate your brand name (at the end of the title tag) for the sake of the other keywords in the tag?
On-Page Optimization | | AliMac261 -
Structured Data on mobile and desktop version of a page
Hey there,
On-Page Optimization | | Online-Marketing-Guy
certain pages of our website have mobile versions like m.mysite.com/content-xyz. On the desktop pages (i.e. mysite.com/content-xyz) we have "rich snippets for ratings" marked up and displayed in SERPs. However the ratings also appear in mobile search results when SERPS reference the mobile version of the page (m.mysite.com/content-xyz) which doesn't have any ratings or markup? I am trying to figure out how Google treats mobile versions of a page in relation to the desktop version in relation to structured data (breadcrumbs etc.)? Would you always mark up both versions to be the same? Any ideas and thoughts on this are greatly appreciated. Cheers, Jochen rich Snippets for Ratings1 -
Is a mobile domain necessary?
Greetings all, I'm starting to build a mobile version of our website to be ready for April 21st. Question is: is it absolutely necessary to have a mobile domain name or can I just direct users to same domain/folder? in other words: www.mywebsite.com/mobile vs m.mywebsite.com - does this even matter? As always, thank you!
On-Page Optimization | | md30 -
Mobile website content
What is the point of optimizing (on-page SEO) a parallel mobile website if the mobile search results are taken from the general (desktop) index?
On-Page Optimization | | echo10 -
Mobile Meta Description shorter then Desktop?
I'm pretty sure when I counted the mobile meta description in Google, it's a lot shorter then the recommended 165 char for desktop. Is it shorter or am I just seeing things?
On-Page Optimization | | activitysuper0 -
301 Redirect to mobile site effecting rankings
On my site I redirect users when on a mobile device to be redirected to my mobile version of my site. In the last couple weeks I added that redirect in my htaccess file. I just realized today that I am doing a 301 redirect. In the last few weeks my ranking have gotten lower. I am starting to think that because of the redirect my mobile site is not as optimized as my regular site and therefor is effecting my rankings. My question is how can I redirect my users to my mobile site but not use a 301 AND how do I get google to use my main site content for ranking on the mobile side. I want to go back to getting my search rankings on the mobile side using my main sites content. Can I simply remove the 301 on the redirect? Hope that makes sense.
On-Page Optimization | | cbielich0