Am I keyword stuffing my titles?
-
I run a site where I answer questions. As I answer each question I choose a title for the page. I have been trying to get good keywords in my titles, but now I am wondering if I have been keyword stuffing them and perhaps I should be more succinct.
So, let's say I had a question about a sore back. Here would be the title tag I would use:
Why is my back sore? I have spinal pain and need relief and help. | My Main Keyword
That's a fictitious example, but the idea is that I would be trying to get the keywords "back", "sore", "spinal", "pain", "relief" "help" and my main website keyword into the title.
As I'm writing this I'm seeing the folly in this. I think it would likely be much better to simply have a title of
Why is my back sore?
So, I have three questions:
1. Is it better to have a succinct title targeting one keyword/keyword phrase than to get lots of keywords in my title?
2. Should I be putting my main keyword after each of my title? Shortly after doing this on 1700+ pages I was #1 for my main keyword. But, I was also doing other things as well to boost my presence for this keyword.
3. If I decide to do more succinct titles, how would you suggest I go about running a test to see which is better?
Looking forward to your responses! Thanks!
-
If the title is relevant to the content then that's good, but from a technical sense: You shouldn't repeat any word in a title more than twice, and each instance of that word should be separated by at least one other word. Then, you have to think about what the titles are going to be on your other pages, I'd say you're more in danger of keyword canibalization within your title in that example than of keyword stuffing (assuming the rest of the site is about back pain, etc...).
-
Ah, thanks EGOL!
So, I will experiment with taking the site keyword off of the end, but keep doing what I am doing with my question titles.
But, perhaps, if I am writing an article about a specific problem I will have a succinct title there.
-
"spamming keywords"
I think that "spamming" occurs when you have keywords in the title that are not descriptive of the article.....
or.... when you just make a big list of keywords without composing them into a coherent question or statement...
I think that "Why is my back sore? I have spinal pain and need relief and help." is not in the "spam" category. (although I might shorten it down to about 60 characters)
-
"Why is my back sore? I have spinal pain and need relief and help."
I like the above for the reasons below.
-- I believe that questions elicit clicks better than statements.
-- You have lots of potential keywords in the title tag. Will work great for pulling in long tail traffic
I believe that the succinct title is good when you have a very powerful site and are gunning for a very basic and difficult keyword. However, if you use that succinct title on lots of pages then you will run into duplication. The longer title will diversify your optimization and pull a greater diversity of traffic.
-
1. Try to avoid spamming keywords into your titles. Keep them Short(ish), informative and helpful.
Maybe a title of "Why is my back sore? asked in Back & Neck Pain". This assumes your categories questions, so the "Back & Neck Pain" bit is your category title.
2. Having a keyword in thousands of page title is not going to be of any significant benefit to your site and it rankings.
3. I would gauge the success by simply applying your new found titling technique to the next few questions you process, follow their success and compare to previous questions.
Keep in mind that your existing 1700 pages may be getting ranked well for phrases which are well optimised in your current titling system. perhaps only apply the new technique to new questions only.
Good luck
-
There is a lot to this question. I think the way you are doing titles now is probably great for increasing the click through, mostly because they are in context. I would venture to guess you may be able to get more impressions by changing this up, but I always recommend quality over quantity. This being said I have NO IDEA what your traffic goals/stats look like. Good Luck!
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
-
Keyword research
Could some give me an example on how they do keyword research because I have tried many things and it doesn't work. Here is what I tried : Let's take a keyword " Alsace bike tours" I go to the keyword tool, lisgraph, ubersuggest, google keyword tool, and type "Alsace bike tours" Thos tools spit me phrases such as : "bike from colmar to riquewihr, "alsace vineyard cycle route", alsace cycle routes. I write my content and integrate those expressions in it. In my content I add words that relate to alsace such as Strasbourg, Colmar, the wine route etc... I wait and weeks later see no change in ranking.. What I am missing ? Thank you,
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | seoanalytics1 -
How to get more keyword ideas
I am trying to get more keyword ideas for one of my project. For example the seed keyword is computer virus and the results which i get is keywords related to the phrase computer virus such as virus in computer , virus threats but actually i am trying to get search details on actual threat names or types of viruses and i expect output such as malware, trojan etc.. ( Currently using ad words keyword planner to fetch keyword data ) Is there any way to achieve this ? Even if i use "types of computer viruses" as seed keyword i am not getting the types of viruses people searching for instead i get keywords ideas such as computer viruses, computer threats etc... ? Can somebody suggest a solution ?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | NortonSupportSEO0 -
Titles and Metas disappeared?? Help please!
Hi everyone, Had a bit of a concern today, my weekly report has come through and my crawl issues have skyrockets by over 400! It says my metas and titles are missing but when I check through the site manually they seem to all still be there, I'm getting the same problem when I use screaming frog to crawl the site. I would really appreciate an explanation from someone as to why this is happening as I am quite confused about the situation. Thank you people Charlie Our website is www.homelogic.co.uk 🙂
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | MintySEO0 -
Keyword not ranking but keyword within a phrase is?
Hi Guys, Google is not indexing the keyword ‘e liquid’ for www.cloudstix.com/e-liquid and it's driving me insane. I cannot understand why, can anyone please shed any light! -On page we have used variations e liquid, e-liquid, eliquid. -The e-liquid product pages are canonicaled to www.cloudstix.com/e-liquid. -3 other pages regarding e liquid were 301 redirected to the page passing good authority. I did this as I believed these pages conflicted as they seemed to target e-liquid. -‘e-liquid’ is being used as an anchor throughout the website pointing to www.cloudstix.com/e-liquid. -The ‘e liquid’ page has generally good authority PA 22, DA26. -The website has good anchor text linking to the site, all relative and e liquid related, along with brand links. Currently the keyword ‘e liquid’ brings up the home page www.cloudstix.com ranked 100+. What’s strange is the other terms relating to 'e liquid' bring up www.cloudstix.com/e-liquid for example: ‘e liquid uk’ ‘the best e liquid’ and ‘e liquid cloudstix’. Any ideas on what the problem may be. Would appreciate any advice on this. Thanks guys! Liam
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | One2OneDigital0 -
Keyword Phrases - Can You Break Them Up?
Can you break up a search query across a sentence and have Google still recognize which query you are targeting? Let's say I'm trying to rank a page for the phrase "best haircuts calgary". Is Google's algorithm advanced enough to look at page title "Best Haircuts - Where To Get Them In Calgary" and know it's targeting the query "best haircuts calgary"? If it can't do this right now, I could see it advancing to this at some point in the future, which would then change the game quite a bit in terms of how creative you can get creating pages for queries.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | reidsteven750 -
Best Keyword Taxonomy Discussion
Sorry to bring this up again but I think the title was very misleading resulting in helpful members ignoring the question/thread completely. Also, I believe this should be in the discussion section, but please correct me if I'm wrong? Hi All, This is my first post and hopefully a question that could help others in similar positions as I haven't been able to find a concrete answer on this anywhere. Say we are trying to rank for the keyword "security testing tools". Product name is "Sectest" and its a security testing tool. *We currently have an "SEO" section that is purely good content and the idea with this is to be able to rank for "security testing tools" talking about what to expect and look for in such tools and relevant content - Linking to our product page at the end of it. structure is brand.com/security-testing/tools and that would have a link to brank.com/products/sectest Obviously product pages would get their meta tags and content re-written so we don't compete for the same keywords. Is this approach optimal? or would google want us to link directly to the product page instead of "information" about security testing tools? Nobody in our sector is taking this approach and we have already started it, but I am starting to wonder if I am getting into big trouble further down the line. Thanks and best regards, 2 Responses<a class="image-button add-response-button"> </a><a name="post-131828"></a> | JorgeGarciaAspirant | about 22 hours ago |JorgeGarcia Just to make it clearer. Our competitors seem to be using "security testing tools" directly in their product pages. We would like to use "security testing tools" for a page with content on it and an introduction to our product and then link to our product page. | <a name="post-131872"></a> | SEO5Journeymen | SEO5Director - Marketing at SEO 5 Consulting Hi Jorge, How are your competitors ranking for their approach by using security testing tools directly. If they are doing well then i would adopt the same strategy and try to beat them with quality backlinks and good on site optimization. SEO is not the only thing you have to worry about , you also should keep conversion rates in mind. By first taking the visitors to a security tools page and then your product page you are increasing your conversion funnel and this might impact your conversion rates. At the end of the day , it's all about sales/revenue/leads/ROI so you dont want to do anything to jeopardize your conversions. That one extra step that the visitor has to take might result in fewer conversions. <a class="image-button add-response-button"> </a> | <a name="post-131946"></a> | JorgeGarcia |
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | JorgeGarcia
JorgeGarcia Hi there, Although I do understand your reasoning, we have the resources and people quantity to focus on all things at once being a big a company. So at the present moment it wouldn't be a matter of prioritizing work - but rather - delivering the best future-proof strategy. I don't mind doing the same as our competitors, but sometimes stepping out of the sheep line is good. You do make a great and very valid point addressing that this is an extra step for the visitor and could lead to fewer conversions. This is holding me back a little bit. But, if properly implemented, wouldn't a content focused site rank way better than a product page would? I guess the real question is if prospects would really find value in the information about "security testing tools" or they would rather just get the product page instead. But just looking from Google eyes, what do you think of this approach? _After re-reading my post I realize I might sound as if all I want is you to agree with me and justify my approach, I don't really. I would really value any honest thoughts and reasoning 🙂 _ |0 -
Keyword weight in Domain Name
Hi All, I'm looking for some advice on URL structure. Our domain name includes 1/2 of many keyword strategies that we're considering. For example our domain is like, dive.com Keyword strategies that we're looking at targeting would include things like, "dive shop", "dive equipment" etc etc Are we competitive to have a structure like this? dive.com/shop/ dive.com/equipment/ Or will this structure yield stronger results? dive.com/dive-shop/ dive.com/dive-equipment/ Your thoughts are appreciated. Thanks! Malcolm
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | MAGNUMCreative0 -
Meta keywords vs tags
On a blog from an SEO perspective how do you choose keywords to use in the "meta keyword tag" vs. "post tags"? Will it be different based on the search volume/competition of the keywords targeted?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | saravanans0