Title Tag Change - Drop in Organic Placement?
-
I've been working on increasing CTR my changing the title tag & meta descriptions. Has anyone ever noticed a drop in organic SERPS from doing so? Even if CTR goes up?
It seems to me that if the CTR goes up and user experience in that way is improved these changes should yield an increase in the average position. Would you agree?
Thank you!!
-
Wow, thank you all for your insights. I really appreciate the feedback.
I have not been removing the primary key phrase the page is optimized for. However I have removed the business name which also is a key phrase. For years my title tag formula was “key phrase | business name”
ie. Las Vegas Wedding Chapels | Vegas Weddings.
Using this example what I’ve done is kept Las Vegas wedding chapels dropped the post ( | ) and Vegas Weddings (business name) to utilize those extra character spaces for a more enticing title tag to increase click through rate. In some cases I may have dropped the Las in Las Vegas to also create more space.
Questions:
1. Any additional feedback with this new information?
2. What do you think about the potential for google seeing the initial formula as keyword stuffing even though it is the business name? Vegas Weddings happens to be one of the most searched keyphrases.
I am not certain that the average positions actually dropped as a result of these changes. It may have been related to a big misfortune we had with google my business listings earlier this year. I will look even deeper into this to see if i can make more precise conclusions from the statistics. Either way all this information is highly valued.
While Im on that topic, does anyone actually know if the search console/google analytics average position stat does or does not factor in the organic placement within google my business?
Thank you all so so much!
-
Leslie, while in theory you are right, Google is still using an algorithm that is very much keyword-driven, and while changing the Meta Description should not affect rankings, changing the Meta Title can and often will have an impact.
I may be old school but I believe the Meta Title should be target keywords focused first, and CTR second, while the Meta Description should be CTR focused first and target keywords second.
If you changed Meta Titles that removed or partially removed the target keywords for those specific pages, I would recommend you add them back. Your Meta Descriptions with the new CTR focus should be ok to stay what they are.
-
It is always possible that a title tag change with decrease the relevance and optimization of a page for some keywords. Changing the title tag can also change the click-through rate.
A few years ago, we were doing some aggressive title tag experiments. We were changing title tags every few weeks on about 80 pages. On about the fifth iteration, all of those pages dropped out of the top ten and stayed out of the top ten for a few months. Fortunately they recovered, we waited a while, changed to our best test results, and the pages have been ranking great for years.
-
I never saw a drop in Rankings when I was changing the Description. Couldn't be, it's not a (direct) ranking factor. But of course, changing titles should be done carefully.
What seems to be better for CTR sometimes is worse for SEO. The title is one of the most important on-page-factors, so yes - could be the reason.
Maybe you should change one title page with clear losts results and organic traffic back, send to google and check later again. Then you will see, if changing was the reason, I think it was.
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
-
Hey guys so i changed my title on the website
The old one was very keyword stuffed and repeated words. see its now gone from search for those main keywords do you think its just playing now and it will be back ?
On-Page Optimization | | johan81 -
Title Tags & Meta descriptions do not update
Hi, I have a question about the title tags and meta descriptions of my domain b-buildingbusiness.com. I've updated them about 5 days ago but the new versions don't show in the search engines. However it does show when you check with the facebook developers tool https://developers.facebook.com/tools/debug/sharing/?q=http%3A%2F%2Fb-buildingbusiness.com%2F . Does anyone have an idea why they're not updated in the search engines and how I can resolve this? Best, Rik
On-Page Optimization | | bbuildingbusiness0 -
My website ranking recently dropping - why?
Hi all, I am a photographer and do my own website and links etc. Website is: http://www.mckayphotography.com.au I have enjoyed good google rankings for my main keyword 'wedding photography sydney' for many years, and even recovered after taking a hit from the penguin (may 2012) update. But the last month has seen a steady drop from around 2nd - 4th down to now 10th. I have analyzed my site using all the moz tools and on most counts eg moz rank and moz trust I am ahead of my competitor sites....but still rank under them on google. So I would greatly appreciate on advice people could give on getting my ranking back up again! Thanks in advance Darryn
On-Page Optimization | | dmck0 -
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 -
Google Results Title Tag HELP
Can anybody tell us why Google changes your title tag in the SERP? If you check out the below link or type in 'days inn', you will see the 2nd result for www.daysinnrc.co.uk just says 'Days Inn' but on the actual site the title tag for this page is 'Days Inn UK | Days Inn | Daysinnrc.co.uk' http://www.google.co.uk/#hl=en&sclient=psy-ab&q=days+inn&oq=days+inn&gs_l=hp.3...4110.4110.4.4297.1.1.0.0.0.0.0.0..0.0...0.0...1c.1.kWVC24EnCHE&pbx=1&bav=on.2,or.r_gc.r_pw.r_qf.&fp=7680231318a44bb0&bpcl=35466521&biw=1920&bih=934 This has happened with another site too, does anybody know why? Thanks
On-Page Optimization | | SEOwins0 -
Fixed horrible title tag on home page, and lost ranking. Will it come back?
I was helping out someone on their site and its home page ranked on page 2 for their term, and the title tag was horrible. It was 160 characters long with lots of near repetitive keywords ([keyword] - adjective [keyword] - adjective [keyword] - adjective [keyword] etc.) -- typical title that Google would penalize when it got around to it. So I created a title that made sense, for the keyword, and that followed the best practices of Google recommendations. Now it's dropped off the index. (EDIT: sorry, still in index, just not even in top 1000) Is this something I should not have done? I was just trying to keep them from getting slammed. And, how long should I expect it to take to get my ranking back? This is the only page title I changed.
On-Page Optimization | | bizzer0 -
Page titles and descriptions
A website has several wigets to show Each wiget with its own page The wigets mostly just vary in size How would you suggest titles be done? Example: Wiget 1ft Wiget 2ft Wiget 3 ft an so on........ Would this trigger a duplicate content issue given “Wiget” leads in the page title?
On-Page Optimization | | APICDA0