Why are apostrophes and other characters still showing as code in my titles?
-
Hi,
I have a WordPress-based site and overall everything is working well. However, I can't seem to figure out how to get apostrophes and other characters to display normally.
Now, the problem isn't that they are displaying as code to normal visitors or up in the title bar, they are displaying as code to Google's bots as well as to SEOMOZ.
Example:
Normal visitor sees:
About **** | **** - Metro Vancouver's IT & Web Experts
Google and SEOMOZ see:
About **** | **** - Metro Vancouver's IT & Web Experts
I've played around with different ways of typing the title (not using character codes vs. using character codes) and nothing seems to work.
Any help or explanation would be appreciated.
-
Gabriel-
It's no problem for these codes to appear in other sections of the page. There are many character sets out there, and what may appear great to you (without codes) looks like gibberish to someone else. The codes help make for a uniform experience for everyone. For instance, there are no "smart quote" keys on your keyboard, yet some programs (like Word) will automatically insert these for you. To have these on a web page most systems will convert these to codes for you. The ampersand, however, falls into this category since it's often an escape character for other characters.
So, the place we're still really most concerned about is the meta title. I'm not sure why the mb_convert_encoding() function didn't work for you?
If you'd like me to take a closer look feel free to message me. This is solvable - I've done it before on WP sites.
-
One more thing - I've noticed that Google, SEOMOZ, and Firefox's View Source all show apostrophes, ampersands, and other characters as code not just in the title tag but also throughout the body of the page - so it is a general problem.
-
I actually removed site caching because it was causing some problems. But yes, I had it on previously.
I'm wondering if the wordpress function - wp_texturize - is doing something funny to the titles...
-
Gabriel-
Do you have some sort of site caching turned on?
-
Fixed some of the other issues with my site (had a bunch of white spaces in my php files) but this is still not working. I inserted your code and it doesn't break anything, but it doesn't work either from what I can tell...
-
Gabriel, I think we're close here... give this a try:
<title></p> <p><?php wp_title('«', true, 'right'); ?></p> <p><?php echo mb_convert_encoding(get_bloginfo('name', 'display'), 'UTF-8', 'HTML-ENTITIES'); ?></p> <p></title>
-
Okay, I found the line:
<title><?php wp_title('«', true, 'right'); ?> <?php bloginfo('name'); ?></title>
And I tried inserting your code multiple ways but now Fetch as Googlebot is saying the site is unreachable. I've reversed but still get same problem...
Strange stuff.
-
Look in your header.php file. Here's what the <title>tag code might look like. Again, you may need to wrap the mb function around more than one piece. This should get you started.</p> <blockquote style="color: #5e5e5e; background-image: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: #f7f7f7; padding-top: 5px; margin-left: 0px; padding-left: 2px; padding-bottom: 5px; white-space: nowrap; overflow-y: auto; font-family: monospace; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial;"> <p><span style="color: #5e5e5e;"><title><?php</span></p> <p><span style="color: #5e5e5e;"> </span><span style="color: #5e5e5e;">/*</span><span style="color: #5e5e5e;"><span> </span>Print the <title> tag based on what is being viewed.</span><span style="color: #5e5e5e;"><span> </span> */</span></p> <p><span style="color: #5e5e5e;"> </span><span style="color: #5e5e5e;">global $page, $paged;</span><span style="color: #5e5e5e;"><br /></span><span style="color: #5e5e5e;"><span> </span></span></p> <p><span style="color: #5e5e5e;">wp_title( '|', true, 'right' );</span><span style="color: #5e5e5e;"><br /></span><span style="color: #5e5e5e;"><span> </span></span></p> <p><span style="color: #5e5e5e;">// Add the blog name.</span><span style="color: #5e5e5e;"><span> </span>bloginfo( 'name' );</span><span style="color: #5e5e5e;"><br /></span><span style="color: #5e5e5e;"><span> </span></span></p> <p><span style="color: #5e5e5e;">// Add the blog description for the home/front page.</span></p> <p><span style="color: #5e5e5e;">$site_description = mb_convert_encoding(get_bloginfo( 'description', 'display' ), 'UTF-8', 'HTML-ENTITIES');</span><span style="color: #5e5e5e;"><br /></span><span style="color: #5e5e5e;"><span> </span></span></p> <p><span style="color: #5e5e5e;">if ( $site_description && ( is_home() || is_front_page() ) )</span></p> <p><span style="color: #5e5e5e;"><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>echo " | $site_description";</span><span style="color: #5e5e5e;"><br /></span><span style="color: #5e5e5e;"><span> </span></span></p> <p><span style="color: #5e5e5e;">// Add a page number if necessary:</span></p> <p><span style="color: #5e5e5e;">if ( $paged >= 2 || $page >= 2 )</span></p> <p><span style="color: #5e5e5e;"><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>echo ' | ' . sprintf( __( 'Page %s', 'oldheidelbergdeli' ), max( $paged, $page ) );</span><span style="color: #5e5e5e;"><br /></span><span style="color: #5e5e5e;"><span> </span></span></p> <p><span style="color: #5e5e5e;">?></title>
-
Thanks for looking into this. Approximately where would I place this code?
-
This worked for me....
$site_description = mb_convert_encoding(get_bloginfo( 'description', 'display' ), 'UTF-8', 'HTML-ENTITIES');
The text is getting encoding in the second half of your meta tag, so if you convert the encoding you should be able to get around this. You may need to apply this to several sections of that depending on what's going on... check the tag out on several pages.
Let me know how it works out.
-
Well what would be the html entity code for a standard apostrophe. And even if that is solved, the & is still not displaying correctly.
I've searched many forums for the answer but nothing seems to be coming up!
-
Hi Gabriel,
' Looks like an html entity code for some non-standard apostrophe. Not sure why though, it looks normal. Your apostrophe might need to be changed to a single quote instead.
-
I've done what you've said and this is what I've come up with:
<title><?php wp_title('«', true, 'right'); ?> <?php bloginfo('name'); ?></title>
Does anything look odd?
-
Ahh, you are right about the first ampersand. You should probably take a look at the wp_title() function and see if it's doing any html_special_chars filtering. Again, if nothing else seems to work, you could change up the "and" remove the possessive on Vancouver.
-
Thanks for the quick reply. I tried doing that but not luck. The odd thing is that using Google's Webmaster tools, I see that the meta title and some of the headings have the code in them whereas other body text doesn't. Either way, I need to resolve this.
I tested a page and here are a couple of lines:
<code><title>IT & Web Services | **** - Metro Vancouver's IT & Web Experts</title> Odd how the first & (and) looks fine whereas the second doesn't.</code>
-
Hey Gabriel-
Quick and dirty... you could change the meta title to Function 5 - Metro Vancouver IT and Web Experts.
Have you tried putting the full & in the meta title? There might be a double-conversion issue going on there.
-John
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
-
Wrong domain name showing in the SERP
I work with Axos Bank, and the domain name in the SERP started showing axos-services.com a couple of weeks ago. *As a test, search for [axos bank] in Google. You may need to click on "Search instead for axos bank" under "Showing results for axis bank" which is a whole separate issue we want to resolve. They do own axos-services.com, and it redirects to axosbank.com (along with a number of other domains). The SERP has always shown axosbank.com until recently, but the redirect has been in place for some time. Any idea why and how to prompt Google to show the correct domain? Thanks, all!
Technical SEO | | Gildej0 -
Updated Title Tag preference
Hi, This was a topic a couple years ago https://moz.com/community/q/title-tag-use-comma-pipe-or-colon I was wondering if there was any update on this as the consensus on this thread seemed to say using a pipe as a separator is best, but in Moz's title tag recommendations it has hyphen and pipe Primary Keyword - Secondary Keyword | Brand Name Does anyone know if using a pipe | between the primary keyword and secondary has adverse effects? Also, does removing the brand name for the sake of length hurt you in any way? Thanks for the help!
Technical SEO | | AliMac260 -
Html Improvements in Webmaster shows many as Duplicate Titles
Html Improvements in Webmaster shows many as Duplicate Titles. As attached they are not duplicates we made a way to make text hyperlinks if the name matches other objects in our site. How can we deal in such case for Google not to this it as 2 different URl's rather they are one. As the ones with ?alinks are just hyperlink URL's Say we have a name as "James" and he has a biography in our site. Say "Gerald" has a Bio as well and we talk about "James" in "Geralds" bio the word "James" gets a hyperlink automatically so when anyone clickes "James" it goes to his bio. k5jDM
Technical SEO | | ArchieChilds0 -
Why does my 301 show the old urls with new descriptions and titles?
Hi all, We've just rebranded. The 301 appears to have worked well and moved the results and rankings onto the new domain. However a site:olddomain.com search in Google brings up about a hundred pages that have the new titles and descriptions but show the old urls - does anyone have any idea how to make the old domain disappear from the SERPS? Many thanks, Richard
Technical SEO | | panini0 -
Duplicate content or titles
Hello , I am working on a site, I am facing the duplicate title and content errors,
Technical SEO | | KLLC
there are following kind of errors : 1- A link with www and without www having same content. actually its a apartment management site, so it has different bedrooms apartments and booking pages , 2- my second issue is related to booking and details pages of bedrooms, because I am using 1 file for all booking and 1 file for all details page. these are the main errors which i am facing ,
can anyone give me suggestions regarding these issues ? Thnaks,0 -
Google is changing the title
Hi! Lately i have seen that Google changed the page titles for some clients, not all... its about 30% of them. For example, the title looks likes this after the Google change: Company name: SEO and Pay per click management But in on that page it looks like this: SEO and Pay per click management - Company name Does anyone know why?
Technical SEO | | DanielNordahl1 -
Duplicate Page Title for multilingual wordpress site
Hello all, I have received my first crawl reports and I find a lot of errors of duplicate page title. In the wordpress site I use the qtranslate plugin in order to have the site in 2 languages. I also use the Yoast SEO plugin in order to put titles, description and keywords to each web page. By looking deeply in the duplicate page title errors I think I found that the problem is that every web page takes the same SEO Title for each language. But I am not 100% sure. I tried to use some shortcodes of the qtranslate plugin like the following ABOUT [:en]About in order to indicate and give different titles per language for one web page but that doesn't seem to work. Does anybody here has experienced the same problem as me? Do you have any suggestions about how to ressolve the problem of the duplicate page title? I can give you the URL of the website if you need it to have a look. Thank you in advanced for your help. I really appreciate that. Regards, Lenia
Technical SEO | | tevag0 -
What's the latest on Title Tags?
What is the latest on what Google is looking for? Keyword one, Keyword two? Sentences with the Keyword in them?
Technical SEO | | netviper0