Are descriptive titles better?
-
I'm thinking about changing the page titles on my website and wanted to know if it is a good idea to help improve SEO!
Using a page 'training and engagement' as an example (as is on the dropdown), the page title itself is actually 'Providing the skills to make the change stick.'
Is that long descriptive title negatively effecting me? Or should I change it to 'Training and Engagement'?
Any help would be greatly appreciated
Sam
-
Hi @sammecooper, it is definitely a good idea to optimise your page titles to improve SEO. These can have a great impact on SERP ranking as well as CTR.
Firstly as has been mentioned by others here, it is very important to include your target keyword in the title "Training and Engagement" it is also then good to follow up with a more engaging phrase that will encourage people to click on your page. Something like you have already as a combination of both "Training and Engagement: Providing skills to make the change stick" (don't be scared to use longer titles but keep the URL as short as possible (also including the target keywords)).
It may also be useful to have a read of this post about stop words that are ignored by search engines https://www.semrush.com/blog/seo-stop-words/
Other points to test out for increased CTR (which can lead to better ranking in SERP) is to use emotional SEO power words, emoji and even [brackets] in your title. These have been shown to increase CTR in many cases.
Also worth mentioning this recent update by Google where HTML title tags are being replaced by the H1 of the page for SERP listings https://www.seroundtable.com/semrush-data-titles-google-32004.html
Good luck with your optimisation, it is an ongoing process so don't give up if you don't see immediate results!
-
Use the keyword always, that the most important part.
-
@nozzle Thank you! I'll get testing. Thanks again.
-
@sammecooper I'm a huge fan of testing several different Title Tags for each important page.
The first thing you need to, if you haven't done so already, is to create a keyword map. This map will tell everyone on your team which page is going to be optimized for which keywords.
Then, you take the most important phrases that have been mapped or assigned to a specific URL and try and figure out how to get them in the title tag while still writing something catchy that someone will click on.
Don't be afraid to test longer title tags that are even more than 65 characters; just keep in mind that humans will only see and read what's in the first 65 characters when looking at your listing in the SERPs so that part is the most important.
So change your title tag, wait until Google comes to recrawl the page and the changes have been cached, then check your rankings to see if you moved up or down for all the keywords in the keyword map for that page. If you are on page 1, you can monitor the CTR of that listing in Google Search Console to get an idea if your click through rate moved up or down as well.
Then every so often test another title tag variation for that page and rinse and repeat until you find the best title tag that results in the best rankings for the mapped keywords with the highest CTR.
-Boyd
-
@martijn_scheijbeler Thank you Martjn, that's very helpful!
-
@sammecooper If you're trying to rank for: Training and Engagement then you likely want to include that in the title tag instead of making it too descriptive. Google does put still quite some value in it. In this case, I'd try to find a way to make it both descriptive as well as enticing to click.
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
-
How unique should a meta description be?
I'm working on a large website (circa 25k pages) that presently just replicates each page title as a meta description. I'm thinking of doing a 'find and replace' in the database so I change: to where the preceeding and following text would be the same in each case eg Is this unique enough? Obviously the individual keyword would make it technically unique each time....and manually changing them would take the rest of my life 🙂
On-Page Optimization | | abisti21 -
Google finding my meta descriptions
I recently had my site redone (about a year ago). Since then google has not been using my meta descriptions much and more so using the descriptions within my site. Is there a reason for this? An example would be http://www.waikoloavacationrentals.com/vrp/unit/kolea-14/
On-Page Optimization | | RobDalton0 -
Should the title tag now be 50 characters long?
Hi, I'm fairly new to SEO and as a rule so far I have been making every page title around 70 characters in length, after analysing the a website that I'm currently working on in the MOZ tool it say's that the page title element is to long. Does anyone know if I should carry on writing titles 70 characters in length or if I should go down to 50, I have been using this tool (http://www.seomofo.com/snippet-optimizer.html) as a guide if you know of any others then that would be great and any advice will be greatly appreciated. Regards Chris
On-Page Optimization | | chrissmithps0 -
Page Titles For Local - Help on URL Structure
Trying to figure out the best way to construct localized urls for the dental website. For example, If I have the URL:
On-Page Optimization | | Czubmeister
http://www.kooskidental.com/services/cosmetic-dentistry/
and If I want to make it local to the city I would use: http://www.kooskidental.com/services/richardson-tx-cosmetic-dentistry/ But what happens is that I have other options off the menu like: http://www.koooskidental.com/services/richardson-tx-cosmetic-dentistry/teeth-whitening/ But if I am trying to rank for richardson tx teeth whitening, I would have to do http://www.koooskidental.com/services/richardson-tx-cosmetic-dentistry/richardson-tx-teeth-whitening/ But that's pretty long and ugly and I don't think I need richardson-tx in their twice. If I am trying to rank for richardson tx cosmetic dentistry and richardson tx teeth whitening, what would be the best structure for the url's?0 -
Title and Url Agreement
In the case of trying to hit a wide taxonomy, is it better to keep your title and URL in agreement, or to vary them slightly for exact search matching. For instance this blog post which has the following url: http://www.simplifiedbuilding.com/blog/build-your-own-standing-desk/ has the title "Make a Stand Up Desk - Better Working, Longer Living" The ideas is that build and make are similar words and "stand up" and "standing" are also similar. So what is the better way to go?
On-Page Optimization | | CPollock0 -
Things to put in your page Title
Hello! I have a wordpress based blog/website and I was wondering what were the most important things to put in my title. I'm a wedding photographer. I think the location of the shoot is important and the fact that it's wedding photography, but is it important to try and put my company name (Celynnen Photography) in it too?! It's very hard to keep the titles short! Ioan
On-Page Optimization | | IoanSaid0 -
Better to update or add articles?
Hi, We have an online gift store and we write new blogs every year. Question is, if we already had a blog that's called 'Top Valentine Gifts' from last year,should we update the blog content with the most updated data, or should we add a new blog called 'Top Valentine Gifts 2012' and rename the old one to 'Top Valentine Gifts 2011' (and 301 redirect the old URL)? Which one is more beneficial in terms of SEO?
On-Page Optimization | | Essentia0 -
Post Title - Use the blog's name or not?
In the tile of my post, shoudl I used my blog's name in it at the end or emit the blog name. EX: title of post with keywords | name of blog OR EX: title of post with keywords The site's name is 3 words long, so I'm worrying that those extra words are diluting the keywords in the post's name that I'm trying to target.
On-Page Optimization | | gregalam0