Keyword Placement in Page Title - will changing it make a big difference?
-
Hiya guys
I've noticed since changing my Title of my forum from:
Talk Nightlife | Nightlife and Clubbing forum for the UK
to
Talk Nightlife | Nightlife Forum and Clubbing Guide for the UK (current)
... That its jumped from 22nd to 10th in google for term "nightlife forum"
Am wondering, because of the on site optimisation tool telling me I should put the keyword to the front to something like eg:
Nightlife Forum | Talk Nightlife Clubbing Guide for the UK
Will changing the Keyword and putting it to front of the Title make a big difference?
Your thoughts please guys
Cheers Luke
-
Yep, I like this one too Dana.
I'm sure "UK Clubbing Guide" would have more searches than "Clubbing Guide for the UK" anyway.
-
I'm not a fan of stop words in titles. How about
Nightlife Forum | UK Clubbing Guide | Talk Nightlife
What do you think? I basically just got rid of the "and, for, the" - But it remains very readable.
-
Thanks for your responses guys, very much appreciated. The next step would be to change it, but advise to changing it to what? in your opinion the best.
Talknightlife is a nightlife forum for the Uk (hope you guessed that)
... so it's currently Talk Nightlife | Nightlife Forum and Clubbing Guide for the UK
what you you reckon? changing it to
A: Nightlife Forum and Clubbing Guide for the UK | Talk Nightlife
B: Nightlife Forum | Talk Nightlife a Clubbing Guide for the UK
Nightlife Forum | Talk Nightlife | Clubbing Guide for the UK
I'm ranking 1st for "Uk nightlife forum" / "Nightlife Forum UK" so I don't really need UK at the front.
Thanks for your help so far guys, let me know more your thoughts
Regards Luke
-
Hi Luke!
It is my experience that title tag is still a weight element and the last one. What that means is that first word has more effect then second that has more then third etc. We are not talking about any dramatic but a little little more.
The reason for this and the strongest reason why you should "weight" your most relevant (important) keyword to the front is how the user interact with your search result in the SERP.
Users do a vertical reading which means that our eyes will catch the first 2-3 words while browsing downwards in the SERP, so if dont have your relevant keywords within that "area" you will get less clicks.
That is also why, we in most case (not always) want the brand keyword last, so we can keep as relevant keywords in the beginning of the title as possible.
Also if you auto generate a lot of your titles, it's smarter that if you title is longer than the ~63 characters the brand tag falls out than the relevant keyword for that page.Also a note, if Talk Nightlife Clubbing Guide for the UK is your "brand tag" I would recommend to rework it to something shorter, to leave more room to page specific information to the left.
-
Actually blogs are talking too much about link building that it seems like on-page optimization is less important or some even come to me for link building on their website with any on-page optimization was not proper.
I think On-page optimization is really important and out of all the on-page factors title tag is one of the most important one. I think if title tag can be handled correctly you can actually beat your very powerful competitors for some of the highly competitive key phrases.
-
Hi Luke,
Most of the initial jump was probably due to the fact that "nightlife forum" wasn't actually in your original page title. You had the 2 individual words in your title but they weren't placed next to each other, thus Google reads them as "nightlife" and "forum".
By putting them together it signals to Google that you're trying to rank for that phrase.
As for the placement of keywords at the beginning of your page title, sure it helps a little. I usually recommend having the brand/web site name at the end. I'd go for something like:
Nightlife Forum and UK Clubbing Guide | Talk Nightlife
Your site will rank for "Talk Nightlife' anyway, it doesn't need to be at the beginning of the title.
Hope this helps!
-
In short yes it makes a difference. However Primary Keywords vs Branded Keywords can influence your CTR.
If you have a high affinity Brand I certainly would consider putting those at the front of the page otherwise I have always follow the specific to general format.
-
I too have seen this kind of change make a big difference, but sometimes it;s short term and the page sinks back down to where it was before. I think a new page title makes Google bot temporarily "curious" and it thinks "Oh I've found a new page!" Remember, bots aren't as smart as humans, so it takes them a while to catch on.
It's great that your page moved up. Watch it for a month and see what happens. If it retains its position, then maybe it's a good tactic to try on other pages
It could be that the change you made was a better "title" for the actual page. Finding better, more accurate, concise and descriptive titles that really hone in on what your page is about is always a good thing.
Hope that helps!
-
Yes! It's really make big different, my experience, i'm working on many of keywrods very compete last month, keyword in begin of title help me ranking better (from 14 > 4 within 4 day, 8 > 5 within 7 day... ).
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
-
Shifting target keyword to a new page, how do we rank the internal page?
I have been targeting one keyword for home page that was ranking between the postilion 6-7 but was never ranking on 1st as there were 2 highly competitive keywords targeted on the same page, I changed the keyword to an internal service page to rank it on 1st, I have optimized the content as well but the home page is still ranking on 11th, how do I get the internal page rank on that keyword
On-Page Optimization | | GOMO-Gabriel0 -
Repeat keywords on the pages/titles
I know it is important to avoid duplicate titles and title tags, but I wanted to verify. Lets say you are a collection agency, would it be smart as a strategy to do domain.com/collectionagency/Dallas_ collection_agency and have that same key word structure for many states so many pages?
On-Page Optimization | | SeobyKP0 -
Optimise root level page for secondary keyword or try to make second level rank?
My Main keyword ranks no where in the top 100 for any pages in my site. for / I am ranked at number 10 for a great secondary keyword. Really want to get this secondary keywordranking on /secondary-keyword.html , should I focus my main page only on my primary keyord and remove any references to "Secondary Keyword"? What I feel here is that I would be sacrificing my rank for "Secondary Keyword"
On-Page Optimization | | Adamzoz0 -
Do parameters in a URL make a difference from an SEO point of view
We us a number of different parameters in a number of our URLs to track how the user has navigated to the page. So for example we will have a page www.example.com/product/?banner to show that the user has navigated to the page from the banner as opposed to www.example.com/product/?footer to show that the user has navigated to the page from the footer. Do search engines treat these pages as the same page or different pages? Thanks
On-Page Optimization | | cbarron0 -
Properly changing title, URL and content for new keywords without harming other rankings.
Hello - We are looking to try to bring up some keywords in the SERPs that we are currently ranking fairly low for. We sell Christening clothing for children and people will use both Christening and Baptism to search for the same thing. We currently rank very high for Christening (#1 on Google for certain combinations) but we are fairly low on Baptism.
On-Page Optimization | | BabyBeauBelle
I am trying to figure out the best way to start getting Baptism up by changing some title, URL and content pages to include more Baptism keywords. My concern is messing with the existing because we rank so well for Christening. Since we are ecommerce we can vary this quite a bit on our products, but again I'm nervous to do so fearing changing the wrong things, too many products etc and in the process of trying to raise one set of keywords (baptism) we harm the other set (christening).
Any advice would be appreciated!0 -
I am optimizing my webpages according to suggestions from the On Page Report Card. Should I have more than one keyword for a page?
I am optimizing my webpages according to suggestions from the On Page Report Card. Should I have more than one keyword for a page or should I make separate pages for each keyword even when they are similar? Will Google penalize me for making similar pages? Imagine selling, bargain milk chocolate peanut clusters. Keywords examples could be: Bargain chocolate Bargain milk chocolate Bargain milk chocolate peanut clusters Bargain chocolate peanut clusters Chocolate peanut cluster bargains Milk chocolate peanut cluster bargains Etc. Will one page called http://mycompany/bargainmilkchocolatepeanutclusters.com be OK or should I have one called http://mycompany/bargainmilkchocolate.com and one called http://mycompany/bargainmilkchocolatepeanutclusters.com and one called http://mycompany/chocolatepeanutclusterbargains.com , etc.? Thanks for your advice.
On-Page Optimization | | KSHAYY0 -
How? Title in Google differs than actual title tag
Just curious on how sites do this? If you search for a video (perhaps Green Lantern Trailer), you'll see the YouTube results in Google/Bing listed as YouTube - Green Lantern Trailer but when you go to the page, the actual title tag displayed is Green Lantern Trailer - YouTube I've seen other sites do this too. I'm just curious what they are doing (I don't see any other title tags in the html)? I thought your title tag is what is displayed in SERP? Thanks,
On-Page Optimization | | NicB10 -
Has anyone noticed a big delta between Google and Bing rankings? For example, we rank favorably in Google, but not so favorably in Bing. Are there different tactics I should use to rank better in Bing?
An example is in Google, we currently rank #1 & #2 for "yoga pants" for Athleta and Old Navy. In Bing, I'm on page 2. Any thoughts here?
On-Page Optimization | | kpr0