Advice on Title please
-
<y website="" <a="" href="http://www.nile-cruises-4u.co.uk">www.nile-cruises-4u.co.uk was number 1 in Google.co.uk for several years for our main search term "nile cruise" until about 4 months ago when we fell to our current position of 4 or 5.</y>
I am looking at every aspect of optimising the site and wonder if I am using a good enough title for the home page? At the moment it is titled:
Nile Cruise | Nile Cruises | Nile Cruise Bargains
I wonder if I should just call it "Nile Cruise"?
I alreay have a seperat page entitled "Nile Cruise Bargains" and wonder if having that phrase in the homepage title would have any adverse affects?
Earlier this year our site was hacked and we spent 2 weeks with it being unavailable until we had rebuilt and repaired it. After that our position dipped.
We have a Blog going back to 2007 and when we repaired the site the Blog was affected in that although we managed to re-install the hundreds of posts they were without all of the SEO tags and categories, etc, etc.
I've been slowly adding those but there are still hundreds to do. Could this be affecting our page position?
Thanks,
Colin
-
Thanks Keri.
I'll make sure to take off the Links Exchange from the footer.
Colin
-
You wouldn't set up reciprocal links, but instead find ways to get more valuable one-way links. The links section of the blog is a good place to look for ideas on getting good links.
-
Regarding the Link Exchange feature which you have suggested getting rid of...if I do that and then try and build links how would I set up reciprocal links?
Colin
-
Thanks very much Eyepaq. That's a great help.
Cheers.
-
Hi Colin,
Yes, that's right.
However keep in mind that the Title tag length is also a factor.
I would keep the new Title tag and track the results: ctr, rankings and then adjust accordantly if needed.
If CTR dosen't change but you drop a few rankings I would cut down from the Title Tag a little.
Remember that it helps for the keyword to be as closest to the beginning as possibile (if it make sense) - in your case looks good and also the size of the Title Tag as far as characters.
Hope it helps.
-
Eyepaq, I've cahnged the Title to "Nile Cruise | 5 Star Luxury Nile Cruise with Full Excursion Programme" which now shows on the blue top line of IExplorer.
Is that where you suggested that a title with something in it (call to actions, etc) might get better CTR's?
Colin
-
Thanks very much Eyepaq for your suggestions.
I hadnt' thought about the spammy aspect of the current title plus the effect of already having a Nile Cruise Bargains page. I'll do as you suggest with the link from that page too.
I'll set to work on getting those posts on the blog set up as they used to be.
Thanks also for the other issues you flagged up. I'll get those sorted asap.
Much appreciated.
Colin
-
Hi,
There are a few issues with the site - some more important then others.
I will list a few bellow and hopefully those ideas will help you get better.
First of all "Nile Cruise | Nile Cruises | Nile Cruise Bargains" as title tag looks kind of spammy. I would just place, like you said the main one, "nile cruise" and add some call to action to increase CTR.
I alreay have a seperat page entitled "Nile Cruise Bargains" and wonder if having that phrase in the homepage title would have any adverse affects?
** That can cause canibalization issues within your site. I would focus on one page and optimize for long tail on the same page if possible.
Try linking from the page "Nile Cruise Bargains" to your home page in a predominant position or you can even set a rel canonical for this page in order to let Google know what page is your main one for that term.
We have a Blog going back to 2007 and when we repaired the site the Blog was affected in that although we managed to re-install the hundreds of posts they were without all of the SEO tags and categories, etc, etc.
** Yap. That can damage you good especially if those pages were linking to your home page.
A few other issues I am seeing:
-
you have two head tags in the home page. What's up with that ?
-
get rid entirely of the meta keyword tag - on all pages. Dosen't help you.
-
get rid of the link exchange area in your footer - for good - that one can really hurt you.
-
your main page is lacking freshness. can you add something on a ciclic basis ? Some info about your offers, news about Egipt or anything that will make sense for the user to read in correlation with the nile cruises.
There has been a lot of changes in serps in the last period of time. A lot of links were devaluated - that can also be the reason for your drop - or all those combined.
I would start reviewing the link profile very carefully and only build links that make sense - links that are not spammy in nature.
Dose it make sense ?
Hope it was helpful - at least as a start in your assessment.
-
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
-
Titles being too long
I am in process of trying to help a client (who I also am an associate for) and they have over 600 pages (which are images) that have the same info in their tag, missing description, and you are talking 1500-2k pixels in their title. I called the host and the owner of the host said "If you were a real seo you would know that the title length doesn't matter." .... help me out here.
Content Development | | SeobyKP0 -
Advice on Security Concerns for WordPress Site
My company has a WordPress site (URL is learn.automationdirect.com) It is a very simple site and is currently under utilized. I would like to make some SEO improvements to it by activating comments and installing an SEO plugin like Yoast but, I am being help back by concerns about the sites security. Is there some sort of suggestion/advice you guys can point me to that will help get the site to a place where we are confident in it's security level, and I can move forward with optimizing it?
Content Development | | ChadC0 -
Advice on how to handle Guest Blogging between multiple brands
How to you manage your guest blogging efforts between companies. I blog for 4 different companies, and just started….I am confused if I should blog as myself, or should each company have an "author" set up, and then guest blog under each author? I want their website to get better rankings, and the brand to get more engagement. I am not concerned about myself and my authorship rating….but should I be? Would that be more beneficial to have all blogs tied to me, to help with engagement. Or am I shooting myself in the foot by not increasing my authorship. What's more important? Authorship or blogging about the relevant content from the author that makes the most sense? Just looking for tips from anyone that has to blog under different brands. How do you do it?!?! (also, looking into myguestblog plugin)
Content Development | | cschwartzel0 -
Blog and keyword advice
Hi, i am going to add a blog to my site to encourage more visitors as well as encourage google to visit the site more often but i am concerned on a couple of things. The blogs will be on weight loss hypnotherapy, anger management therapy and also gastric band hypnotherapy and i am concerned that by writing a number of articles on this topic that by using the keywords it will lower my rankings for the following keywords, gastric band hypnotherapy, anger management therapy, weight loss hypnotherapy. To help you understand more, i have three sections which are gastric band hypnotherapy, anger management therapy, weight loss hypnotherapy, which rank well with google and i am worried that if i write about these subjects in my blog that it will reduce my rankings. Should i reduce the number of times i use the word gastric band hypnotherapy in my new blog articles and say only say the word once or twice so google does not thing that is my main page on the subject. any help would be great.
Content Development | | ClaireH-1848860 -
Correction Duplicate Page Title Problems for a Blog
EDITED: To just focus on the issue at hand. I am trying to figure out the SEO rules instead of just working on the content. Please bear with me. I am adept technically. I just do not know the rules of the SEO process or even some of the termology. So I’m trying to attack problems one at time. Today’s problem – **Duplicate Page Titles ** We evidently have thousands of Duplicate Page Titles. We are using Joomla 2.5 & Easyblog. Our sitemap is automated from XML Sitemap Easyblog takes the title of the sites and uses it for a name of the summary pages. We post 5 blog items per page and all the names are the same. http://www.OursiteName.com/?start=5 Page Title = Site Name http://www.OursiteName.com/?start=10 Page Title = Site Name A similar thing happens on the sorting by Author or Category etc etc. Basically non-duplicate pages are looking like duplicates. What is the best practice / approach? Using the Robot.txt or XML Sitemap to tell Google not to crawl these pages? Writing a script or edit the Easyblog code to edit the 2000 duplicate Page Titles? Other thoughts?
Content Development | | Romana0 -
Is my new page to busy please advise
hi i am testing a page which i am working on at the moment, have some image problems which i am sorting out. what i would like to know if you feel this page is to busy or if this page looks ok. I would also like to know if this page would tempt you to click on other articles or if you would just go off this page once you have read the story. here is the page http://www.in2town.co.uk/news/celebrity-showbiz-news/fans-angry-over-x-factor-judge-nicole-scherzinger any help would be great
Content Development | | ClaireH-1848860 -
Leap of Faith - Damm the consequences - Title Tag Change
the crazy things we do mid week. But after reading Cyrus' post on beating Panda I went back to my website design site http://www.grangewebdesign.com which I had set up a plugin which had all my posts setup as Website Design - %%title%% So basically every Title tag had Website Design in front of it. REadingthis post now it suggests that this is bad practice so I just changed it to %%title%% which now of course means that I should perhaps look more closely at the titees I have been using. Was embedding the Website Design in front of the post overkill? thoughts appreciated...
Content Development | | kdaly1000 -
Please help me stop google indexing https pages on my wordpress site
I added SSL to my wordpress blog because that was the only way to get a dedicated IP address for my site at my host. Now I am noticing Google has started indexing posts both as http and https. Can some one please help how to force google not to index https as I am sure its like having duplicate content. All help is appreciated. So far I have added this to top of htaccess file: RewriteEngine on Options +FollowSymlinks RewriteCond %{SERVER_PORT} ^443$ RewriteRule ^robots.txt$ robots_ssl.txt And added robots_ssl.txt with following: User-agent: Googlebot Disallow: / User-agent: * Disallow: / But https pages are still being indexed. Please help.
Content Development | | rookie1230