Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
Duplicating words in the page title OK?
-
Im finding a site with lots of duplicated words in the title tags, I have always avoided doing this in the past, Is there any penalty for having a word repeated twice in the title, indeed is there a benefit from having it twice, IM assuming not
For example: Marketing Services in Milton Keynes | Our Services | TFA
https://www.t-f-a.co.uk/servicesthe word service is repeated twice, in my opinion this is of no benefit at all and is better rewritten to remove the duplication
-
Hi,
While there is no excessive use of keywords, you do not have to have any problems. Always look for naturalness and above all try and experiment. You can read more about keyword stuffing to avoid possible Google penalties
Regards
-
My recommendation is to always test, test, test. Your default should be to test and use the title tag that gets you the combination of best rankings and highest click-through rate. And to find the optimal title tag, you should be testing one's that duplicate keywords too.
I'll give you an example but I'm going to change out the actual essential oil name used so my client remains anonymous.
On March 5th, a specific page was ranking on Google as follows:
- #19 for "catnip essential oil"
- #17 for "catnip oil"
- #7 for "where to buy catnip oil"
The title tag at the time on that page was: "Catnip Essential Oil | Website Name".
I changed the title tag to "Catnip Essential Oil - Where To Buy Catnip Oil | Website Name".
After the page was recrawled by Google the rankings moved up to better positions. Here are the results:
- "catnip essential oil" has been as high as #6 but is at #9 today.
- "catnip oil" has been as high as #8 but is at #10 today.
- "where to buy catnip oil" moved up to #1 and remains there today
- No change in click-through rate
As you can see the results are better even with duplicating the words "catnip" and "oil" in the title tag.
Someone suggested that I should have just changed the title tag to "Where to Buy Catnip Essential Oil | Website Name". That is a worthwhile test and maybe I'll do that still just to see what happens but for now I actually prefer having both "catnip essential oil" and "catnip oil" in my title tag.
Hopefully you can see from this real world result that you can have duplicate words in your title tag and that testing is more important than following so called "best practices".
-
Hi,
In the example you have given, I cannot see the benefit, especially because people aren't going to be searching for "our services" in particular. I agree with your opinion that it would make better sense for you to rewrite the meta title so it flows better.
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
-
Landing page separate from product page
Hello there, I have a wordpress website with a woocommerce plugin. I have 4 landing pages that describe my products and at the end of the pages, I have a CTA to my product page. is it bad for SEO? my website: https://relationadviser.ir
On-Page Optimization | | Aaron.be1 -
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 -
Site name in page title - leave it or remove it?
Hi all, Recently came across some authority blog (quicksprout to be precise) which stated that apart from main page, contact page, about us and some other generic pages, site name should be removed as it might produce duplicate content. example "How to blog | Example Site name" This mostly is the issue with tags and categories pages as it shows on Moz issues. Is that really a problem and site name should be taken off them? Thank you.
On-Page Optimization | | Optimal_Strategies1 -
Do You Add City Name & Key Word For Every Page?
Hello, I'm new to SEO but feel I have a decent grasp on it. However, I had a question pertaining to key words and using my city name in it. For instance, if I am using the key word "herniated disc treatment" do I need to put in my city name behind it or does google recognize that I am already in my city area because of my geo tagging and having it listed on the footer of my site? Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks! -Scott
On-Page Optimization | | slgray0 -
Duplicate page titles and Content in Woocommerce
Hi Guys, I'm new to Moz and really liking it so far!
On-Page Optimization | | jeeyer
I run a eCommerce site on Wordpress + WooCommerce and ofcourse use Yoast for SEO optimalisation I've got a question about my first Crawl report which showed over 600 issues! 😐 I've read that this is something that happens more often (http://moz.com/blog/setup-wordpress-for-seo-success). Most of them are categorized under:
1. Duplicate Page Titles or;
2. Duplicate Page Content. Duplicate Page Titles:
These are almost only: product category pages and product tags. Is this problem beeing solved by giving them the right SEO SERP? I see that a lot of categories don't have a proper SEO SERP set up in yoast! Do I need to add this to clear this issue, or do I need to change the actual Title? And how about the Product tags? Another point (bit more off-topic) I've read here: http://moz.com/community/q/yoast-seo-plugin-to-index-or-not-to-index-categories that it's advised to noindex/follow Categories and Tags but isn't that a wierd idea to do for a eCommerce site?! Duplicate Page Content:
Same goes here almost only Product Categories and product tags that are displayed as duplicate Page content! When I check the results I can click on a blue button for example "+ 17 duplicates" and that shows me (in this case 17 URLS) but they are not related to the fist in any way so not sure where to start here? Thanks for taking the time to help out!
Joost0 -
1500 words per post * 10 posts vs 15000 words in one article, which is best for SEO?
If you don't have any problems with Text/HTML ratio. Which one do you prefer for better results? With reasons of possible, thanks.
On-Page Optimization | | Eslam-yosef0 -
Missing meta descriptions on indexed pages, portfolio, tags, author and archive pages. I am using SEO all in one, any advice?
I am having a few problems that I can't seem to work out.....I am fairly new to this and can't seem to work out the following: Any help would be greatly appreciated 🙂 1. I am missing alot of meta description tags. I have installed "All in One SEO" but there seems to be no options to add meta descriptions in portfolio posts. I have also written meta descriptions for 'tags' and whilst I can see them in WP they don't seem to be activated. 2. The blog has pages indexed by WP- called Part 2 (/page/2), Part 3 (/page/3) etc. How do I solve this issue of meta descriptions and indexed pages? 3. There is also a page for myself, the author, that has multiple indexes for all the blog posts I have written, and I can't edit these archives to add meta descriptions. This also applies to the month archives for the blog. 4. Also, SEOmoz tells me that I have too many links on my blog page (also indexed) and their consequent tags. This also applies to the author pages (myself ). How do I fix this? Thanks for your help 🙂 Regards Nadia
On-Page Optimization | | PHDAustralia680 -
Title tag for category page
I'd like to know your views on the best approach for title tags for category pages for ecommerce sites. 3 examples A) Category name | Free delivery on $50 purchase | Brand name B) Discover best "category name" on brand name C) Category Name | 1st Keyword, 2nd keyword | Brand name Thanks!
On-Page Optimization | | walidalsaqqaf0