Automate process for naming page titles?
-
Hi everyone,
I'm new to the Moz community, but really loving it. I'm hoping some of you more experienced experts may be able to answer what is probably a pretty basic question.
I'm working for a non-profit client and I used the SEOMOZ tool to run a report on their site errors. I learned that the website has 5,432 duplicate page titles. They had their website redesigned last year before I started working with them and it appears that the developers didn't take into a account the need to provide unique page title names to each page.
While it may make sense to go in to add custom page titles to a handful of the pages for the site, the vast majority of the pages are allocated to products (e-commerce). Is there a script that the developers could add that would automatically add page unique page titles based on say, the title of the product?
Here are a few URLs to help you get a sense of what we're dealing with.
homepage: www.creativityexplored.org
example level two page: http://www.creativityexplored.org/artists/douglas-sheran
example product page: http://www.creativityexplored.org/shop/original-art/prints/2776/profile-of-a-lady
Thank you so much for any advice you can offer.
Best,
Linda
-
Hey George. Thanks for cluing me into the Holiday Express reference. Very funny. And yes, you were able to help me out.
Thank you!
-
No problem, glad I could help.
The Holiday Inn Express reference is in regards to a series of commercials they ran some time ago lol...
Here's a Youtube video from one of them:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=endscreen&NR=1&v=l8Ah8WTL2i8
It basically means that I don't normally code in Ruby, but I think I can still help you out ;).
-
Hi George,
Thank you for your response. No, not too technical at all. I follow what you're saying. I'll pass this information on to my client and hopefully it's a relatively easy fix.
If anyone else has any additional information about implementing the solution specifically for Ruby code, I would appreciate it.
Thank you!
Linda
P.S. George, I'm curious, what is the connection between being a Ruby developer and staying at a Holiday Inn Express?
-
It looks like the product pages are dynamically created based on the product id in the URL (e.g. 2776 from your product page example). This product page could be updated to dynamically produce a different title based on this same information.
For example:
$product = getProductByProductID(2776);
$artist = getArtistByArtistID($product->artistID);
<title><?php echo "$product->name by $artist->name"; ?></title>
?>
Mind you, this is PHP code and you are using RESTful URLs so your site is likely written in Ruby - though I'm just guessing here.
For Ruby, this is essentially pseudo-code as I am not a Ruby developer by day (though I did stay in a Holiday Inn Express last night), but I believe you are looking to do something like this in your controller:
def product_page
@product = Product.find(params[:id])
@artist = Artist.find(@product.artistid)
@page_title = "<%=@product.name%> by <%=@artist.name%>"
end
Then in your page template you can use:
<title><%= @page_title %></title>
Hope this helps and sorry if it is too technical/cryptic; but your developers should be able to do something like this pretty easily. It appears to already be underway to produce the rest of the page content. Now they just need to use it to populate the page title (and maybe the meta description - use part of the product 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
-
Use Internal Search pages as Landing Pages?
Hi all Just a general discussion question about Internal Search pages and using them for SEO. I've been looking to "noindexing / follow" them, but a lot of the Search pages are actually driving significant traffic & revenue. I've over 9,000 search pages indexed that I was going to remove, but after reading this article (https://www.oncrawl.com/technical-seo/seo-internal-search-results/) I was wondering if any of you guys have had success using these pages for SEO, like with using auto-generated content. Or any success stories about using the "noindexing / follow"" too. Thanks!
Technical SEO | | Frankie-BTDublin0 -
Why is it the crawler saying I have 9 Duplicate Page Titles?
Hi, I received my weekly web crawl and it is saying this: | 4 | Duplicate Page Content |
Technical SEO | | afrohairsolutions
| 22 | Missing Meta Description Tag |
| 9 | Duplicate Page Title |
| 1 | Title Element Too Long (> 70 Characters) |
| 1 | Title Element Too Short |
| 1 | 301 (Permanent Redirect) | I'm new to SEO and don't know how to fix this, I don't really see how I have Duplicate Page Content or Duplicate Page Title. This is my website: afrohairsolutions.co.uk Thank you in advance.0 -
How to verify a page-by-page level 301 redirect was done correctly?
Hello, I told some tech guys to do a page-by-page relevant 301 redirect (as talked about in Matt Cutts video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r1lVPrYoBkA) when a company wanted to move to a new domain when their site was getting redesigned. I found out they did a 302 redirect on accident and had to fix that, so now I don't trust they did the page-by-page relevant redirect. I have a feeling they just redirected all of the pages on the old domain to the homepage of the new domain. How could I confirm this suspicion? I run the old domain through screaming frog and it only shows 1 URL - the homepage. Does that mean they took all of the pages on the old domain offline? Thanks!
Technical SEO | | EvolveCreative0 -
Page URL Change
We're planning on rolling out a redesign of an existing page, and at the same time, we're looking to possibly changing the URL of the page. Currently, the URL is www.blah.com/phraseword1-phraseword2-phraseword3-phraseword4 and we're ranking top 3 in Google SERP for that 4-word phrase. The keyword phrase is something we have in our Page Title, Site Copy and the URL. Now, we are planning on simplifying the URL to below.. www.blah.com/phraseword1-phraseword2 The plan is to 301 redirect the original URL to this new URL and actually work the exact phrase into the copy a few more times. My understanding is that URL doesn't get as much weight as it does in the past, but it's still important. So my question is... How important is the URL in this case where we will continue to have it in our page title and also we'll be working more copy on to the page with the appropriate keyword? Will 301 redirect from the old URL address the issue of passing SEO value for that keyword phrase? Thanks,
Technical SEO | | JoeLin
Joe0 -
Duplicate page content
Hello, My site is being checked for errors by the PRO dashboard thing you get here and some odd duplicate content errors have appeared. Every page has a duplicate because you can see the page and the page/~username so... www.short-hairstyles.com is the same as www.short-hairstyles.com/~wwwshor I don't know if this is a problem or how the crawler found this (i'm sure I have never linked to it). But I'd like to know how to prevent it in case it is a problem if anyone knows please? Ian
Technical SEO | | jwdl0 -
Limit for words on a page?
Some SEOs might say that there is no such thing as too much good content. Do you try to limit the words on a page to under a certain number for any reason?
Technical SEO | | Charlessipe0 -
301 lots of old pages to home page
Will it hurt me if i redirect a few hundred old pages to my home page? I currently have a mess on my hands with many 404's showing up after moving my site to a new ecommerce server. We have been at the new server for 2 years but still have 337 404s showing up in google webmaster tools. I don't think it would affect users as very few people woudl find those old links but I don't want to mess with google. Also, how much are those 404s hurting my rank?
Technical SEO | | bhsiao1 -
On Page 301 redirect for html pages
For php pages youve got Header( "HTTP/1.1 301 Moved Permanently" );
Technical SEO | | shupester
Header( "Location: http://www.example.com" );
?> Is there anything for html pages? Other then Or is placing this code redirect 301 /old/old.htm http://www.you.com/new.php in the .htaccess the only way to properly 301 redirect html pages? Thanks!0