Brand in Title Tag - a Ranking Factor for Scaling Big Websites?
-
I'm in the middle of redesigning title tags on a large ecommerce site - approximately 9000 product pages.
The old structure was -(product name/description) | (Website/Brand)
So an example would be -
Big League Chew - 13 oz. | Target - With 'Target' Being the site's brand and appearing on each.
With Google's new Title Tag display, our title tags are too long now. Unfortunately, our Brand/Website is HUGE - over 18 characters. My question is two fold -
1. Is it OK to remove brand from the title tags of some particularly long names? Will this impact ranking?
2. Does Google look for brand in these title tags, and more specifically: brand consistency in title tags?
I'd love to cut the brand out of some as the product name is the biggest click-through element by far - but I don't want to affect rankings. My 'gut' says that I should focus on clickthrough rate with title tags and cut brand where necessary. Does anyone have thoughts on this?
-
Thanks FCBM!
I hadn't considered the reformatting Google tends to do anyway.At this point, I haven't seen any where this is the case 'in the wild' for our brand (maybe they've recognized that it doesn't affect the clickthrough on our stuff?). They simply just let it cut off since they're mostly over the 55 or so limit.
I think a test is in order as well. Thanks!
-
I don't have a scientific answer but I do have one based off personal experience and knowledge.
1. The page title is used for ranking purposes and having a brand appended to every title tag actually results in page titles where Google decides to display the brand first and then the keywords which often times get cut off. So your title can be Bubble Gum 72 oz | Target and Google can/does display it as Target : Bubble Gum 72 oz, now imagine the same scenario with a longer brand name and all the sudden Google is cutting off the keywords/ click worthy title.
2. I think that unless you're a very dominate player in a certain industry your brand name doesn't help, even with that said smaller less "authoritative" brands can out rank older brand by just being a better player in the internet marketing game. Consider your audience, is the brand making them click the page because every other brand is spammy/crap or is the brand not adding value?
I expect that you'll get very similar answers to mine from other here. What I would recommend is removing the brand from the title on decent traffic page (not your best but not your worst) and run a test, see if the brand in title does anything.
Lastly, if you need to have the brand and it's causing issues just throw it into the meta description.
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 -
Ogranization Schema/Microformat for a content/brand website | Travel
Hi, One of our clients have a website specific to a place, for eg. California Tourism in which they publish local information related to tourism, blogs & other useful content. I want to understand how useful is to publish Organization Schema on such website mentioning the actual Organization, which in this case is a Travel Agency? Or any other schema would fit in for such websites?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ds9.tech0 -
Would you redirect Website A to Website B, when Website B is in the middle of a HTTP=>HTTPS migration?
Hey guys, I'm curious on your thoughts around this scenario... Website A: 35,000 monthly pageviews 1,000 pages 375 root linking domains currently HTTPS focused on one topic weak rankings for competitive keywords Website B: 3M monthly pageviews 32,500 pages 3,500 root linking domains started HTTP to HTTPS migration 1 week ago. 1/3 of pages indexed as HTTPS. focused on many topics strong rankings for competitive keywords Requirement: I want to have a reliable read on how Website A's keyword rankings change after redirecting it's pages to Website A. This post-migration analysis will be used as a basis to assess the risk of redirecting another website we own that is similar to Website A into Website B. My question: Would you wait until most of the pages on Website B are indexed as HTTPS before doing a 301 of Website A to Website B? Please back up your answer with reasons why or why not 🙂
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | jeremycabral0 -
Recommendations for the length of h1 tags and how much does it matter. What is the major disadvantage if the h1 tags are slightly longer.
recommendations for the length of h1 tags and how much does it matter. What is the major disadvantage if the h1 tags are slightly longer.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | MariaMcGrath0 -
Chinese Site Ranking for our brand name - possible hack?
Hello, We have been notified in the weekly MOZ rankings that we no longer rank for our brand name, which is almost unthinkable as nobody would target it. When I googled it, there is a Chinese site ranking at number one and using our brand name and meta data. What is very strange is that although our internal pages rank in the secondary positions, our homepage does not appear at all for the brand name. Therefore, I am wondering if somehow we have had some sort of hack and they are somehow redirecting to their own site? The brand name is "uksoccershop". Has anyone ever encountered anything like this before or have any idea on what we should do? Thanks for your help.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | simonukss0 -
Website losing rank positions after https
Hi there.. we were having a good increase in rankings since using Moz and then we purchased an ssl certificate so our website would run under https... to make sure our website is only accessed through https, we have used a method on .htaccess (appache) to make sure the website is only reached through https, using: RewriteEngine on
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | mszeer
RewriteCond %{HTTPS} !=on
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ https://%{HTTP_HOST}/$1 [R,QSA] after doing this, from our last crawl perspective, we lost several positions that we were increasing.. what have we done wrong ? we have to fix this asap, please help us...0 -
Google changing the meta title for the homepage causing branding issues
A client of mine." Ross X Bute" current meta title is "Luxury designer clothing | Womens designer clothing" for the homepage. If i search for luxury designer clothing it will show the full meta title for the homepage. however if i search for the brand name.... "Ross & Bute" will show instead of the meta title. Whats the problem? Well my client a few month ago has decided to re brand the business to have a "X" to show instead of the "And". The rest of the site is branded with an "X" rather than "And" The URL www.rossandbute.com, so you can understand where google is getting this assumption from. Is there anyway to change this so it reads the the meta title in the SERPs? Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Martin_Harris0 -
Wordpress Titles
My question is about long url titles, my client is using wordpress and the rankings are going well apart from two, which for some reason just wont move. After using some of the tools available on SEO moz which i have found very helpful I have spotted a re-occuring warning throughout the site, the titles, in word press you have this setting (below) page title : %page_title% | %blog_title% My question is my client has quite good brand online but I done want to impact this. The problem I have is that I have a Keyword in the title then the clients company name which is three words and takes up a lot of space. I am thinking about removing this but in two minds so i was kinda hoping for a bit of advice as this looks like a standard in wordpress. Mike
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | TomBarker820