What is the best way to handle e-commerce Product title names?
-
Hello,
I'm having a little bit of a conundrum, and I'm hoping someone will be able to help!
We have an ecommerce site, and were trying to figure out what is the most SEO friendly way to handle product titles. With our ecommerce software, it currently sets the Product title as the H1 tag (which could be changed if needed). In addition, the product title is what is used as anchor text for any built in links that the ecommerce software builds from the category pages, etc (just like any other ecommerce site). Here's where I'm stuck. I'm trying to determine if it makes sense to use the specific keyword we are aiming for as the product title, or to put variations of the title that would be more descriptive. Here is an example:
We have a Wizard of Oz Dorothy Deluxe Girls Shoes. According to all accounts, the best keyword to attack for this would be "dorothy shoes". However, it loses the more accurate description of "Wizard of Oz Dorothy Deluxe Girl Shoes". But, my thinking is that the H1 tag and anchor text would make more sense to use the term "Dorothy Shoes".
The title tag could go something like this: "Wizard of Oz Dorothy Deluxe Girls Shoes | Dorothy Shoes"
In a situation like this, what do you think would be the "best" way to handle the title tag, product name, H1 tag, and anchor text? I'm sure there will be many different opinions, so I would like to hear what you think is best - and why.
-
People SCAN the SERPs. They don't read every single word of each and every title.
So, if you want them to read yours you better make it something other than a reallylongtonguetwisterwithapipeandcaboose
If I thought that most people are searchin' for "Dorothy Shoes" ... and some might include "Wizard of Oz" then I would have those in the title and not much else.
You don't need "girls" because very few boys are searching. And very few people are going to use "deluxe". Drop the pipe and the repetition.
... and if these shoes are the "ruby slippers" you better get that in there...
Dorothy Shoes: Ruby Slippers from the Wizard of Oz
-
Chris,
There are many factors to consider that would go into a decision here. On the one hand, if "dorothy shoes" is truly the best phrase to use to describe the products AND happens to be the best from an SEO search volume perspective, then yes, that's the way to go.
Here's a question though - could such a short phrase actually be searched by people on a large enough volume who are NOT looking to buy those? That question would need to be asked about every product. It's not just enough to base the decision on search volume. Intent is critical.
Also, if you do enough other SEO, it could be just as valid to use a longer, more descriptive title. That scenario allows you to reach a much more diverse group of people searching than that limited to a very short phrase. You'd need to have quality unique content built up to drive the importance of the shorter phrase, for example. Then again, the opposite can be achieved - using the short phrase as the product title, then building up the long tail through content and other links, for example.
What I have found personally is product titles should as a general rule, be based on what the product actually is, then using other SEO means to build focus around alternate phrase variations. So whether that's "Dorothy Shoes" or "Wizard of Oz Dorothy Shoes" (seemingly to me on first pass, the best two alternatives), that just comes across less spammy as "Wizard of Oz Dorothy Deluxe Girls Shoes | Dorothy Shoes".
Given how we need to find balance while avoiding the potential "over-optimization" now more than ever, that's my recommendation.
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
-
Should we add our company's name in page title tag or not?
We have been adding our company (Townscript) name in all the page titles. For example, in an event page of Lucknow Conclave: www.townscript.com/lucknowconclave the page title is Lucknow Conclave | Alexis Society | Townscript I read somewhere that it's not necessary to put your company's name in the title tag. Is it right? Please help!
On-Page Optimization | | sanchitmalik0 -
Please list some e-commerce sites that integrate lots and lots of content into a beautiful design
And DON'T SAY AMAZON!!!! I'm looking for beautiful examples of sites that are content rich without distracting customers from converting.
On-Page Optimization | | GManSEO0 -
E-commerce product and review pages
Hi, Can somebody tell me what is the best solution for optimizing review pages of product for e-commerce site? For now situation is this: When somebody write review for product, url-s automatically generate for review page. Review page has same page title, meta description (which is the product description) as product page and link with anchor (excact product name) point back to orginal product. The problem is that I often see in SERP that actually review pages rank better than original product pages. Regards, Nenad
On-Page Optimization | | Uniline0 -
Changing domain name
Hello, we have 10 websites in same niche, and plan to build one strong site by making a 301 redirect from all sites to one. We think to do redirect each site to subfolder like this: www.newdomain.com/site1 www.newdomain.com/site2 www.newdomain.com/site3 www.newdomain.com/site4 www.newdomain.com/site5 www.newdomain.com/site6 www.newdomain.com/site7 www.newdomain.com/site8 www.newdomain.com/site9 www.newdomain.com/site10 And in root domain place unique content updated daily. Is this would work? Or this is bad idea? Looking to hear from a qualified technicians advice. Thanks in advance!
On-Page Optimization | | bele0 -
Changing of title page and description
Can I ask how long after changing the Title and Description tags on a website do people have to wait to see these changes reflected in Google? I changed a site of mine a couple of weeks back, pinged the site to google and had well over 5,000 googlebots to the page (not a result of pinging, I get that anyway), yet Google continues to display the old listing. Any secret techniques to speeding this up? Thanks
On-Page Optimization | | Grumpy_Carl0 -
Title tag question
Hi, If I wanted to rank for 'cheap football boots' and 'football boots' which tag would be the best option: 1. Cheap Football Boots (notice both keywords im targeting are included) 2. Cheap Football Boots, Football Boots (both keywords separate) and the keywords sit on an EMD (cheapfootballboots.co.uk) Cheers
On-Page Optimization | | activitysuper0 -
Product sorting and dynamic urls
On our weekly SEOmoz crawls, we get thousands of warnings about overly dynamic URLs as a result of our product sorting options at the top of our category pages. It seems like the ability to sort products by price, name, etc., is nice for the customer. For SEO is this really a problem or can we ignore these warnings?
On-Page Optimization | | teatable0 -
Main Page title change.
Hi, For some reason every week or two I am changing the title tag of my main page. Each change takes place because I find new version better than the old one. Does this have any impact on my SEO results (I'm keeping the main keywords each time) ? If it has an impact is it positive or negative ? And should I stick to one title and not change it under any circumstances for long periods of time ? Thanks!
On-Page Optimization | | lolskizz0