Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
Changing title tags - any potential issues?
-
Hello all,
I am planning to change the title tags throughout a site and am vaguely aware (perhaps wrongly!) that changing title tags across a site is a risk factor - can be a spam flag if changes (to a specific title tag) are implemented too regularly, for example.
Would you change title tags across a site in one go, or implement changes gradually - to avoid any risk of upsetting Google. Do you have any insights/tips on the implementation of title tag changes?
-
We agree with David above, if you are improving the title tags and keep them all unique and original from the other pages on your website doing a "Title Tag Cleanup" or going through and optimizing them should be a benefit. Some tips on Title Tags:
- Have The Keyword You Want To Rank For Be As Close To The Beginning As Possible
- Try to Make it short enough to were Google doesn't cut it off with "..." We use (https://www.portent.com/serp-preview-tool)
- Don't Duplicate Title Tags Across Pages, Try To Make Each One Unique
- Instead of Repeating A Keyword In a Title Try Using An "LSI Keyword" (For Example if you are attempting to rank for "marketing", use "marketing" once and then if desired, use a keyword like "advertising" or "media" etc.)
Hope this helps Luke and best of success!
-
Hi Luke,
I don't think you have anything to worry about with making the improvements in one go.
As long as you are improving your titles to make them more relevant to the content on the page (and not just jamming them keywords), you won't be upsetting Google and you would only see positive results.
Cheers,
David
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
-
Video titles and descriptions
Hi everyone, I have a question about embedding videos on a website: if you optimize the title and description for the video in Youtube, will these be taken into account for the ranking of the page where the video is embedded? Or will only the Youtube link for the video show in SERP's, instead of the page itself? I've read in a post of Phil Nottingham that it's usually not a good idea to embed a Youtube video on your own site, but use Wistia instead, exactly to avoid cannibalisation of your own rankings. Is this correct? Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Mat_C0 -
Best Practices for Title Tags for Product Listing Page
My industry is commercial real estate in New York City. Our site has 300 real estate listings. The format we have been using for Title Tags are below. This probably disastrous from an SEO perspective. Using number is a total waste space. A few questions:
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Kingalan1
-Should we set listing not no index if they are not content rich?
-If we do choose to index them, should we avoid titles listing Square Footage and dollar amounts?
-Since local SEO is critical, should the titles always list New York, NY or Manhattan, NY?
-I have red that titles should contain some form of branding. But our company name is Metro Manhattan Office Space. That would take up way too much space. Even "Metro Manhattan" is long. DO we need to use the title tag for branding or can we just focus on a brief description of page content incorporating one important phrase? Our site is: w w w . m e t r o - m a n h a t t a n . c o m <colgroup><col width="405"></colgroup>
| Turnkey Flatiron Tech Space | 2,850 SF $10,687/month | <colgroup><col width="405"></colgroup>
| Gallery, Office Rental | Midtown, W. 57 St | 4441SF $24055/month | <colgroup><col width="405"></colgroup>
| Open Plan Loft |Flatiron, Chelsea | 2414SF $12,874/month | <colgroup><col width="405"></colgroup>
| Tribeca Corner Loft | Varick Street | 2267SF $11,712/month | <colgroup><col width="405"></colgroup>
| 275 Madison, LAW, P7, 3,252SF, $65 - Manhattan, New York |0 -
Referring domain issues
Our website (blahblah).org has 32 other domains pointing to it all from the same I.P address. These domains including the one in question, were all purchased by the website owner, who has inadvertently created duplicate content and on most of these domains. Some of these referring domains have 301's, some don't - but it appears they have all been de-indexed by Google. I'm somewhat out of my depth here (most of what I've said above has come from an agency who said we should address this before being slapped by Google). However I need to explain to my line manage the actual issues in more detail and the repercussions - any anyone please offer advice please? I'm happy to use the agency, or another - but would like some second opinions if possible?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | LJHopkins0 -
Should I use **tags or h1/h2 tags for article titles on my homepage**
I recently had an seo consultant recommend using tags instead of h1/h2 tags for article titles on the homepage of my news website and category landing pages. I've only seen this done a handful of times on news/editorial websites. For example: http://www.muscleandfitness.com/ Can anyone weigh in on this?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | blankslatedumbo0 -
Wrong titles in site links
Hello fellow marketers, I have found this weird thing with our website in the organic results. The sitelinks in the SERP shows wrong written text. As in grammatically incorrect text. My question is where does Google get the text from? It is not the page title as we can see it. kKsFv0X.png
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | auke18101 -
tags inside <a>tags - is this bad?</a>
Hi, I'm currently redesigning my website, and in many places, I've now decided to make links a little bit more obvious for the user, using tags within a <a>tag in order to make the entire block of text clickable. I was just wondering if this could have a negative impact in the search engines. My gut feeling is no, since I'm actually improving usability, but I guess it could have an impact on how Google looks at the anchor text? An example of the HTML is as follows: </a> <a></a> <a></a> [Cristal Night Club Hotels <address>1045 5th Street
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | mjk26
Miami Beach, FL33139</address> 6.4 miles from Miami Dade County Auditorium](http://localhost:8080/frontend/venue-hotels/cristal-night-club-hotels/301022 "Hotels near Cristal Night Club") Thanks for your thoughts and comments, Best wishes Mike0 -
Should I change my product titles from singular to plural to satisfy optimisation?
At present most of our products are listed in the singular form. http://www.towelsrus.co.uk/towels-bath-towels/aztex/turkish-cotton-bath-towel_ct473bd182pd2744.htm However we are optimising for the plural form after carrying out keyword research The question is should I update the product title to reflect this change? This would then change the URL of the page, H1 tag, H2 tag (both auto generated from the product title) My concern here is that these pages will then become "new pages" and will need to index and rank, albeit they don't rank well as they have never been optimised until now. I could put 301 re-directs in place on the old URL's or i could just let the return a 404. What do people think?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Towelsrus0 -
Why should your title and H1 tag be different?
Is it dangerous to have your H1 tag and your title the exact same thing? My thought was that it's not be the best use of space, but that it couldn't cause harm. What do you think?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | MarieHaynes7