Duplicate Title question
-
Thanks Mozzers in advance for any insight into what I'm sure is a basic SEO question.
I'm working with a resort in the great state of Maine. Their home page title reads Maine Resorts, Resorts in Maine, (company name).
The site has about 400 URL's and over half of the URL's utilize the first keyword phrase of the home page title, "Maine Resorts." Predominately, I find them used on the Accommodations pages (pages that describe each room with a picture) which I would label as deeper pages and non-conversion type pages. The page titles themselves are not exact duplicates of the Home Page Title but might read something like "Maine Resorts, Company Name, Accommodation Listing."
My concern is that the heavy use of "Maine Resorts" as the first phrase in over 200 plus pages might be competing against the home page and pulling the home page ranking down.
Thanks for any help given!
-
Thanks guys! Your help is really appreciated. When I took the site over I thought, "man, 200 pages eating into the home page." In some respects this is true but your answers have provided me with a couple ways of fixing this. Fantastic, gotta love MOZ!
-
What you seem to be addressing in your question is the value (or lack thereof) of having the term "Maine Resorts" as the first term in many of the sites titles. As you suspected, there is little value in doing so, but including "Maine Resorts" somewhere (just not at the start) of those titles is not necessarily a bad idea.
What would be more valuable, would be to use that first position for the targeted keyword(s) of that page. So for the "Accommodation Listing" page:
Accommodation Listing, Maine Resorts, [company name]
Think of a user searching for:
accommodation listings for Maine resorts
Now your Google, which of these two pages do you return (if based on title alone)?
- Maine Resorts, [company name], Accommodation Listing
- Accommodation Listing, Maine Resorts, [company name]
So, If you have a homepage that focuses on "Maine Resorts" as a term, than having the term as the first term works in that case:
Maine Resorts, [company name]
Sounds like your titles are already unique, it's just a matter of tweaking them to be more valuable
-
Each page should have a unique title. It is ok to duplicate the site name such as
Contact Us | Maine Resorts
Reservations | Maine Resorts
The title of the page itself should otherwise be unique. It is also ok to have a partial match but the full title should never be duplicated. For example the following titles would not be considered as duplicates:
Cabins
Log Cabins
Cabin Retreats
If any page has the exact title as another page, it would be considered as a duplicate title and should be corrected.
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
-
To redirect or not to redirect...That is the question
We have old product data that is being updated (approx 30k sku's). Most of the old pages have been indexed and drive the majority of our online sales. But, the updated products have different titles, H1's, etc and have been re-formatted for the better in terms of usability. So, should we redirect thousands of pages to the new pages? Will Google be ok with that?...or should we reformat the current url's with the new data? And, if we reformat current url's with new data...the fear is that the on-page elements that the pages are being pick up for will get wiped out, (be it the H1 in some cases or the title or alt tag for another, etc) because it's simply too much to retain them during the import. Please share
On-Page Optimization | | nisvision0 -
Google Showing H1 Title Instead of Doc Title in Search Results?
I see this often for my website: Google displays my pages' H1 title instead of the document title in its search results. Is there any particular reason for this? Do we have any kind of control on this?
On-Page Optimization | | sbrault740 -
If Google still shows my old title in the search results then there is no way my title change could have changed my ranking yet right?
If Google still shows my old title in the search results then there is no way my title change could have changed my ranking yet right? In other words if I changed from TItleA to TitleB but search results and cache still show TitleA then any SERP drops or increases would still be entirely based on titleA right? Thanks.
On-Page Optimization | | Rezo0 -
Keywords on title
hi, some pages of my website showing keywords attached in google as part of page title, but the title doesn't have that keyword in it. So basically when you search for "keyword (1)" , page ranks for the keyword with this title <address>Keyword (1) + keyword (2)</address> <address>but the keyword (2) is not part of the title, but shows there in google's index.</address> <address> </address> <address>keyword (2) is </address> <address>can anyone help us understand why this is happening ?</address> <address>I 'd appreciate any help.</address> <address> </address> <address>thanks </address> <address>nick</address>
On-Page Optimization | | orion680 -
Phone #s in title tag
Good, bad, or doesn't affect local SEO? Same question for youtube videos. love this place - thanks in advance
On-Page Optimization | | Superflys0 -
Question Regarding Site Structure
I have a quick question regarding site structure that I hope some of you guys could share your opinion on. I watched a white board friday from Rand a little while back where he explains that you need to try and make the site structure as flat as possible. He was saying try having no more that 3 links from the home page to get to the desired location. My question is this. I am looking at a site that has a pretty complex structure that I am trying to clear up as much as possible without making any of there rankings suffer. So they have www.domian.com/general-category/district/town/ and sometimes www.domian.com/general-category/district/town/item-specifics Now i know it is not good as it is, but they are dubious about changing too much as they have some serious traffic coming to the site. But, my question is that all the pages can be found from the home page through the menus/sub-menus. But do these count as a direct link from the home page. Also a problem is that because of this mozbot has detected that there are too many links from the home page and suggested that it should be below 200. But should I make these menu links no index or no follow. Obviously, by doing this, if the link does count as direct from the home page it wont after doing this. Thanks Jenson
On-Page Optimization | | jensonseo0 -
Duplicate page content & title for www.mydomain.com and www.mydomain.com/index.php?
Hi, First post so please be gentle! My Crawl Diagnostics Summary is showing an error relating to duplicate page content and duplicate page title for www.mydomain.com and www.mydomain.com/index.php which are, in my view, the same thing/page? Could anyone shed any light please? Thanks Carl
On-Page Optimization | | Carl2870 -
The Better Title to Use?
Hello Mozers- I am targeting the keywords "liposuction scottsdale", "liposuction phoenix", "liposuction mesa", "liposuction arizona". Out of the following two Titles below, one would you consider the better one? And Why? I am leaning towards the second example. If you have any more ideas that would be great. 1). Tummy Tuck Scottsdale, Phoenix, Mesa, Arizona 2).Tummy Tuck Scottsdale | Tummy Tuck Phoenix, Mesa, Arizona. Thanks!!
On-Page Optimization | | Red_Spot_Interactive0