Does Title Tag location in a page's source code matter?
-
Currently our meta description is on line 8 for our page - http://www.paintball-online.com/Paintball-Guns-And-Markers-0Y.aspx
The title tag, however sits below a bunch of code on line 237
Does the location of the title tag, meta tags, and any structured data have any influence with respect to SEO and search engines? Put another way, could we benefit from moving the title tag up to the top?
I "surfed 'n surfed" and could not find any articles about this.
I would really appreciate any help on this as our site got decimated organically last May and we are looking for any help with SEO.
NIck
-
Hi Nick,
I noticed that as well it is definitely in the header, but it is currently not been found by tools that mimic google bot.
I am running a DeepCrawl.co.uk scan of the site as we speak I will post it when it is finished.
-
Thomas,
I looked at the page source and found the the title tag; it sits at the very end of the head section; not sure if that makes a difference or not. Do you know if there are any instances where we can see the title tag in the page source but some how it is not seen by search engines?
Nick
-
Beautiful Thomas! Thank you so much for taking the time to analyze the site. I may have to look into recommendation of authoritydev.com
-
It's true that it wouldn't matter to the user, such as 'above the fold' real estate. But, to the bots do pay attention to the parts invisible to the user and should be optimized too.
-
The page that you are having trouble with is not showing up as rendering a title in more than one tool
** title tag search**
Screaming Frog
** crawl review**
** internal URLs**
** feedthebot.com**
** I went deeper**
** your server is either slow or the coding is killing it is most likely the coding.**
Google pagespeed score
68 out of 100
This webpage is on the slow side of average. See below the reasons why your page is slow.Load time
Page begins to be seen in: 1582 milliseconds
I have pasted it a lot of graphics below in order to show you that the URL
http://www.paintball-online.com/Paintball-Guns-And-Markers-0Y.aspx
is not showing a title tag to search engines nor is it something four tools have been able to find the title tag regarding that link.
More disturbing is amount of URLs without title tags in the more in-depth crawls.
My strongest suggestion is that you contact a developer.
I can recommend the authoritydev.com
they are very good.
Sincerely,
Thomas
EX4Lb9W.png BwzRStn.png 3g0HEF5.png eDVEJhJ.png voNKl6Q.png YuCMcOc.png panniPZ.png
-
I mean I'm not saying that it's not possible, but above the fold is relevant to the user because it's actually something they see. The section is completely invisible to a user, hence shouldn't be relevant.
-
I honestly don't think that the <title>tag location is your issue.</p> <p>One issue that I'm seeing is that your page load time is pretty abysmal. According to tools.pingdom.com your page load time is around 8 seconds. This probably has to do with the massive amount of code that your site is using. That is at least one thing you may look into improving.</p></title>
-
Yeah, maybe not. But, 'above the fold' is understood to be better real estate on a web page - why not higher up on a document too?
-
I'm not sure that I agree with this. If this were about the
or any element that is actually visibile on the page then I'd be inclined to agree but there is really no reason that you should need to put the <title>tag higher up as long as it is within the <head> section. It really shouldn't affect anything in my opinion.</p></title>
-
Does the location of the title tag, meta tags, and any structured data have any influence with respect to SEO and search engines? Put another way, could we benefit from moving the title tag up to the top?
Yes, location does matter.
Let's consider this extreme scenario: A competitor and you are competing for the same term and have the following...
- The term being targeted is exactly the same
- Both you and your competitors' domain have the same authority
- You both have the same inbound links and internal link structure
- Both properties' content is optimized
Basically, you and your competitor have the same internal/external optimizations - so all other factors are equal aside from the <title>location.</p> <p>Pages are rendered from top to bottom. Crawlers read pages from top to bottom. Your competitors' <title> tag is higher on the page than yours. When Google crawls the site, they understand this (the location of the title tag in relation to the page). How will they decide between your page and your competitors' page? Your competitor puts the title tag up higher on the page than you do, it must be more important.</p> <p>Now, this is a very extreme scenario that is super difficult to replicate (you'd need to control both sites to do it properly). But, using this extreme can show why location of the <title> tag is important. It may be a very slight difference, but sometimes that is all that is needed.</p></title>
-
As long as it is in the section of your page. Crawlers look for tagging information in this section first so it may be missed if it is anywhere else.
If you are concerned about the amount of code in the top head section, you could move all that javascript into a external js file and reference it.
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
-
What's with the redirects?
Hi there,
Technical SEO | | HeadStud
I have a strange issue where pages are redirecting to the homepage.Let me explain - my website is http://thedj.com.au Now when I type in www.thedj.com.au/payments it redirects to https://thedj.com.au (even though it should be going to the page https://thedj.com.au/payments). Any idea why this is and how to fix? My htaccess file is below: BEGIN HTTPS Redirection Plugin <ifmodule mod_rewrite.c="">RewriteEngine On
RewriteRule ^home.htm$ https://thedj.com.au/ [R=301,L]
RewriteRule ^photos.htm$ http://photos.thedj.com.au/ [R=301,L]
RewriteRule ^contacts.htm$ https://thedj.com.au/contact-us/ [R=301,L]
RewriteRule ^booking.htm$ https://thedj.com.au/book-dj/ [R=301,L]
RewriteRule ^downloads.htm$ https://thedj.com.au/downloads/ [R=301,L]
RewriteRule ^payonline.htm$ https://thedj.com.au/payments/ [R=301,L]
RewriteRule ^price.htm$ https://thedj.com.au/pricing/ [R=301,L]
RewriteRule ^questions.htm$ https://thedj.com.au/faq/ [R=301,L]
RewriteRule ^links.htm$ https://thedj.com.au/links/ [R=301,L]
RewriteRule ^thankyous/index.htm$ https://thedj.com.au/testimonials/ [R=301,L]
RewriteCond %{HTTPS} off
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ https://thedj.com.au/ [L,R=301]</ifmodule> END HTTPS Redirection Plugin BEGIN WordPress <ifmodule mod_rewrite.c="">RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /
RewriteRule ^index.php$ - [L]
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule . /index.php [L]</ifmodule> END WordPress RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^mrdj.net.au$ [OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^www.mrdj.net.au$
RewriteRule ^/?$ "https://thedj.com.au/" [R=301,L] RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^mrdj.com.au$ [OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^www.mrdj.com.au$
RewriteRule ^/?$ "https://thedj.com.au/" [R=301,L] RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^thedjs.com.au$ [OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^www.thedjs.com.au$
RewriteRule ^/?$ "https://thedj.com.au/" [R=301,L] RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^theperthweddingdjs.com$ [OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^www.theperthweddingdjs.com$
RewriteRule ^/?$ "https://thedj.com.au/" [R=301,L] RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^thedjs.net.au$ [OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^www.thedjs.net.au$
RewriteRule ^/?$ "https://thedj.com.au" [R=301,L]0 -
New Page Showing Up On My Reports w/o Page Title, Words, etc - However, I didn't create it
I have a WordPress site and I was doing a crawl for errors and it is now showing up as of today that this page : https://thinkbiglearnsmart.com/event-registration/?event_id=551&name_of_event=HTML5 CSS3 is new and has no page title, words, etc. I am not even sure where this page or URL came from. I was messing with the robots.txt file to allow some /category/ posts that were being hidden, but I didn't re-allow anything with the above appendages. I just want to make sure that I didn't screw something up that is now going to impact my rankings - this was just a really odd message to come up as I didn't create this page recently - and that shouldnt even be a page accessible to the public. When I edit the page - it is using an Event Espresso (WordPress plugin) shortcode - and I don't want to noindex this page as it is all of my events. Sorry this post is confusing, any help or insight would be appreciated! I am also interested in hiring someone for some hourly consulting work on SEO type issues if anyone has any references. Thank you!
Technical SEO | | webbmason0 -
Page title tags and joomla/JCE
I'm working with a joomla/JCE website. At the moment, the 'title' field in articels controls the page title, menu item name and H1 tag. I've read that I can stop this happening so that I can name each separately and get my Page title tag back! Is anyone using joomla/JCE and can give any advice on how to do this? Many thanks. Iain
Technical SEO | | iain0 -
Has Google stopped rendering author snippets on SERP pages if the author's G+ page is not actively updated?
Working with a site that has multiple authors and author microformat enabled. The image is rendering for some authors on SERP page and not for others. Difference seems to be having an updated G+ page and not having a constantly updating G+ page. any thoughts?
Technical SEO | | irvingw0 -
Should H1 tags include location?
I have an IT services company that is based out of Denver. In the past I always used Denver in the H1 tag like this "Denver IT Support & Managed Services" or "Denver Data Center Solutions" I know that H tags are not that important any more but I still want to put them on each page. My question is in a post panda world do those look too spammy? Should I not include Denver on each page. I have about 25 service pages that I was going to do this for. Each page will be different because of the service but I was going to include Denver on each page. On that same note how, I normally put never in the title for each page. Should I rethink this also? Obvisouly I want to rank on Denver and the service. Any help on this would be great. Thanks
Technical SEO | | ZiaTG0 -
Unnatural Link Warning Removed - WMT's
Hi, just a quick one. We had an unnatural link warning for one of our test sites, the message appeared on the WMT's dashboard. The message is no longer there, has it simply expired or could this mean that Google no longer sees an unatural backlink profile? Hoping it's the latter but doubtful as we haven't tried to remove any links.. as I say it's just a test site. Thanks in advance!
Technical SEO | | Webpresence0 -
Putting nav code at the bottom of a page?
Hey, We are doing a re-design on our websites and we have run into a little problem. Basically we need to put the nav code at the bottom of the page (so when you view source all the nav code it at the bottom) but the nav will of course still show at the top. Will this cause any issues with our SEO? Will it make the nav seem less important or get crawled less? Thanks for the help in advance! Ricky
Technical SEO | | Fubra0 -
From your perspective, what's wrong with this site such that it has a Panda Penalty?
www.duhaime.org For more background, please see: http://www.seomoz.org/q/advice-regarding-panda http://www.seomoz.org/q/when-panda-s-attack (hoping the third time's the charm here)
Technical SEO | | sprynewmedia0