Is all duplication of HTML title content bad?
-
In light of Hummingbird and that HTML titles are the main selling point in SERPs, is my approach to keyword rich HTML titles bad? Where possible I try to include the top key phrase to descripe a page and then a second top keyphrase describing what the company/ site as a whole is or does. For instance an estate agents site could consist of HTML title such as this
Buy Commercial Property in Birmingham| Commercial Estate Agents
Birmingham Commercial Property Tips | Commercial Estate Agents
In order to preserve valuable characters I have also been omitting brand names other than on the home page... is this also poor form?
-
I would say that for the latter part of the Title it is better to have the actual name of the company than "Commercial Estate Agents" on every page. Apart from that is on the home page where the format could be "Name of company | Commercial Estate Agents".
That way you are reinforcing the company name/brand which is reasonable whereas I think repeating "Commercial Estate Agents" is a little spammy and IMHO you don't need to keep using it as the clear message of the site and the pages it has should give the understanding that the site if for a commercial estate agent.
On your other question, I would say:
Birmingham Commercial Property Tips | Company Name
is better than
Birmingham Commercial Property Tips | Help find the perfect premise
The latter says what the page is about, presumably "commercial property tips", but the second part is just extra words that I assume are saying the same thing, apart from the first part is more focussed on Birmingham.
That's not to say you couldn't use the latter in the page Description tag which could read something like "Company Name will help you find the perfect commercial premises in Birmingham". At the start of the the page itself I would also say something similar.
Peter
-
Thank you for your response I understand and always try to follow your points so I suppose my questions is actually: Is the duplicate content of the title describing the company/ site detrimental i.e pages from the same site competing for the same search? So if all pages contain the phrase "commercial estate agents" because that is what they are, would it be seen as spammy and would the pages compete against each other?
For one of the core service searches I have three consecutive results for different pages including the homepage. Is this a good or a bad thing?
My point about humming bird is whether further explanation of the page would be more beneficial than explaining the website? For example is
Birmingham Commercial Property Tips | Commercial Estate Agents
Better than
Birmingham Commercial Property Tips | Help find the perfect premises (ignoring length)
This latter solution has better contextual information making each HTML title completely unique but does this weaken the site's ranking for Commercial Estate Agents?
-
I would say a lot of this depends on the goals for each page.
Think of your page title and meta description as an adwords ad for that particular page. If you were to put up an ad to get people to come to that page, what would the headline and ad copy be?
Would that headline and ad copy properly sell the click? Does the page deliver on the promise sold in the ad? (In other words, will they see one headline and come to a page whose copy is totally different, or does the headline and copy lead right into the page?)
Depending on how strong your brand is, you may want to include the brand name within the body copy. People like what they know and if you've already invested in brand equity, then get that to pay off for you in terms of more clicks.
Titles and Metas are more of an art form as you're balancing how well the title helps direct ranking (focused keywords) with how well the title sells the click (persuasive headlines and branding copy).
As with most things - you'll want to do some testing and see which works best both for your site and your search queries.
-
Just as Kevin said! [thumbs up]
Peter
-
Hi, I don't think it is true to say that as a result of Hummingbird that Title tags are are the main selling point in SERPs, but certainly having lots of keywords in your Title will not be helpful to you.
The longer the Title tag, the less SEO value each word has, but that doesn't mean you should always aim for a very short Title tag either. The most important words need to be near the start of the Title and most of all - and this it true pre-Hummingbird as well - the Title should be a good summary of what the page is about.
Think about the Title tag as the title of a page or chapter in a book. It needs to be succinct but descriptive enough to be understood (by both a person and the search engine) and it needs to be unique.
The Title examples you have given look reasonable and well targeted I would say.
I hope that helps,
Peter -
No--best practice is to describe the page as best as possible and this typically consist of using keywords. If you try to stick many kw's in the title tage, it will look spammy and should be avoided (the two examples you gave, IMHO, are perfect).
Is using your company name in the title is acceptable? Yes it is--however it should be secondary and creating a good compelling title (that closely matches searcher's query and page content) should be top priority.
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
-
Same content, different languages. Duplicate content issue? | international SEO
Hi, If the "content" is the same, but is written in different languages, will Google see the articles as duplicate content?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | chalet
If google won't see it as duplicate content. What is the profit of implementing the alternate lang tag?Kind regards,Jeroen0 -
Duplicate Content That Isn't Duplicated
In Moz, I am receiving multiple messages saying that there is duplicate page content on my website. For example, these pages are being highlighted as duplicated: https://www.ohpopsi.com/photo-wallpaper/made-to-measure/pop-art-graffiti/farm-with-barn-and-animals-wall-mural-3824 and https://www.ohpopsi.com/photo-wallpaper/made-to-measure/animals-wildlife/little-elephants-garden-seamless-pattern-wall-mural-3614. As you can see, both pages are different products, therefore I can't apply a 301 redirect or canonical tag. What do you suggest?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | e3creative0 -
Duplicate page content errors for Web App Login
Hi There I have 6 duplicate content errors, but they are for the WebApp login from our website. I have put a Noindex on the Sitemap to stop google from indexing them to see if that would work. But it didn't. These links as far as I can see are not even on the website www.skemaz.net, but are links beyond the website and on the Web App itself eg : <colgroup><col width="529"></colgroup>
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Skemazer
| http://login.skemaz.net |
| http://login.skemaz.net/LogIn?ReturnUrl=%2Fchangepassword |
| http://login.skemaz.net/Login |
| http://login.skemaz.net/LogIn?ReturnUrl=%2FHome | Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated. Kind regards Sarah0 -
Duplicate/ <title>element too long issues</title>
I have a "duplicate <title>"/"<title> element too long" issue with thousands of pages. In the future I would like to automate these in a way that keeps them from being duplicated AND too long. The solution I came up with was to standardize these monthly posts with a similar, shorter, <title>, but then differentiate by adding the month and the year of the post at the end of each <title>. Hundreds of these come out every week, so it is hard to sit there and come up with a unique <title> every time. With this solution the <title> tags would undoubtedly be short enough, however my primary concern is, would simply adding the month and year at the end of each <title> be enough for Google/Moz to decide it is not a duplicate? How much variation is enough for it not to be deemed a duplicate <title>? </p></title>
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Brian_Dowd0 -
If it's not in Webmaster Tools, is it Duplicate Title
I am showing a lot of errors in my SEOmoz reports for duplicate content and duplicate titles, many of which appear to be related to capitalization vs non-capitalization in the URL. Case in point, if a URL contains a lower character, such as: http://www.gallerydirect.com/art/product/allyson-krowitz/distinct-microstructure-i as opposed to the same URL having an upper character in the structure: http://www.gallerydirect.com/art/product/allyson-krowitz/distinct-microstructure-I I am finding that some of the internal links on the site use the former structure and other links use the latter structure. These show as duplicate title/content in the SEOmoz reports, but they don't appear as duplicate titles in Webmaster Tools. My question is, should I try to work with our developers to create a script to change all of the content with cap letters in the destination links internally on the site, or is this a non-issue since it doesn't appear in Webmaster Tools?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | sbaylor0 -
Duplicate Content in News Section
Our clients site is in the hunting niche. According to webmaster tools there are over 32,000 indexed pages. In the new section that are 300-400 news posts where over the course of a about 5 years they manually copied relevant Press Releases from different state natural resources websites (ex. http://gfp.sd.gov/news/default.aspx). This content is relevant to the site visitors but it is not unique. We have since begun posting unique new posts but I am wondering if anything should be done with these old news posts that aren't unique? Should I use the rel="canonical tag or noindex tag for each of these pages? Or do you have another suggestion?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | rise10 -
Duplicate content on sub-domains?
I have 2 subdamains intented for 2 different countries (Colombia and Venezuela) ve.domain.com and co.domain.com. The site it's an e-commerce with over a million products available so they have the same page with the same content on both sub-domains....the only differences are the prices a payment options. Does google take that as duplicate content? Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | daniel.alvarez0 -
Duplicate content on index.htm page
How do I avoid duplicate content on the index.htm page . I need to redirect the spider from the /index.htm file to the main root of http://www.manandhisvan.com.au and hence avoid duplicate content. Does anyone know of a foolproof way of achieving this without me buggering up the complete site Cheers Freddy
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Fatfreddy0