Long title problem
-
I'm getting an incredible number of 4xx errors and long titles from a small website (northstarpad.com); over 13k 4xx errors and almost 20k "title element is too long". The number keeps climbing, but the site shouldn't have more than a couple hundred pages. When I look at the 4xx errors they are clearly being generated by some program since they have multiple and repeating keywords.
Here's an example:
I looked at the ftp files and plugins and couldn't see anything that could cause it, but I'm a beginner so no surprise there. Any suggestions where to look or how to fix this?
-
Thanks!
-
I can point you towards the best places online to find wordpress developers;
- https://clarity.fm/browse/technology/wordpress
- https://www.odesk.com/o/profiles/browse/skill/wordpress/
- http://premium.wpmudev.org/blog/find-wordpress-developer-designer/
Try those!
-
Hello Dan,
I've sent your message to a few web developers who apparently don't have a clue. Any suggestions on someone who could fix this?
Thanks!
-
Thanks a bunch Dan! I'm still clearly a neophyte, but am learning as I go so I appreciate your detailed responses. I'll get someone to work on the URLs right away.
It's also good to know Screaming Frog's limitations for the freebie.
-
I just wanted to clarify that the SEO plugin has nothing to do with this, and also turning all in one on/off will probably not fix anything.
Either you may have the free version of Screaming Frog which limits to 500 URLs, or you may need to adjust crawl settings - my crawl definitely was heading towards the 57k
-
The root of your issue is that there are links that are coded incorrectly
--> http://screencast.com/t/ndeKw3PL
which is resulting in infinite crawling of pages that do not really exist, and thus the same duplicate/long title tags.
For example this page is a good URL: http://northstarpad.com/category/business-portrait-metro-detroit/
But as shown in my screenshot the "Pet Photography" image links to: http://northstarpad.com/category/business-portrait-metro-detroit/pet-photography// which is a bad URL and NOT http://northstarpad.com/pet-photography/ which is where it should link.
Essentially your links should be "absolute" URLs (which show the full file path) not "relative"
--> http://screencast.com/t/koL5QX9B
You'll need to pass this to a web dev who knows how to edit your WordPress theme files.
-
I crawled the site with Screaming Frog and it only showed 475 pages instead of the 57k+ from Moz, and none of them had 404 errors. Is it possible that Moz is crawling our WordPress pages? I looked in our settings for a way to exclude that URL, but couldn't see where to do it.
We'll also try deleting/reinstalling the All in One SEO pack to see if that helps.
-
Thanks a bunch Nakul! I'll let you know if any of your suggestions help me find the problem.
-
Looks like a problem with Wordpress. Are you using any SEO Plugins like Yoast or something ? I'd suggest reaching out to your Wordpress Guy and have them look into it. It's clearly an issue, and needs to be fixed. You can also download Screaming Frog SEO Spider and crawl your website with it to see where Google is finding these links from. It could also be an issue with your Theme or Permalinks. These are the only areas I can think of. You are using the latest version of Wordpress, so you are good from that point of view. So has to be a Plugin, Theme or your Permalinks settings.
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
-
Create Page Titles from H1 using Yoast?
I'm working on a site that has 280 blog posts that have either been migrated from an old CMS site or created on the Dev version of the new WordPress site. We've written 280 unique meta descriptions so they don't truncate but it there a quick way I can export the current H1s and then import them into Yoast so they are set as the Page Titles? I've written unique Page Titles and meta descriptions for all the Service and Products page and just want a way to speed up the blog posts as their H1s are really good and what I would use as Page Titles anyway. Any help, greatly appreciated!
Technical SEO | | Marketing_Today0 -
H1 Tags the same as Title Tags and other meta questions
I run an ecom store that has about 800 live products. When everything got set up, no one set up the title tags correctly. So I am going through to update them in bulk. What I was going to do was to take the product name (which serves as the H1 tag), use that with a postfix | CompanyName. If length is an issue I trim it down. But the question is, will having essentially duplicate information in here be an issue? Also, when someone was setting up meta descriptions, they often used basically the product name or a half sentence. Would it be better to remove the descriptions and allow google to decide? I even had some that were literally just the brand name of the product, which I already removed.
Technical SEO | | ShockoeCommerce0 -
Wrong Title In SERP
Hi, When i search for specific keyword that i rank in Google, my title page is completely different from what i see on actual page, but when i search for my other keyword that i rank too, i can see exact same title that i have on my page for the same URL, I'm using Thesis theme to manage my meta tags, How can i change that Title, my CTR dropped dramatically for the past week since it happened Thanks
Technical SEO | | KentR0 -
Duplicate Version of Home Page Causing Problems?
Hello, I have a .php based site and i'm curious if how we split traffic is negatively affecting our rankings. Currently, if you visit Lipozene.com you are split 50/50 between two pages, indexa.php and indexb.php. These have identical content right now, and i'm curious if this has negatively affected our rankings. We've dropped off the SERPs for our brand term "lipozene" even though we are the official site and own www.lipozene.com . Any thoughts are greatly appreciated.
Technical SEO | | lipoweb0 -
Problem with Rel Canonical
Background: We check to make sure that IF you use canonical URL tags, it points to the right page. If the canonical tag points to a different URL, engines will not count this page as the reference resource and thus, it won't have an opportunity to rank. If you've not made this page the rel=canonical target, change the reference to this URL. NOTE: For pages not employing canonical URL tags, this factor does not apply. Clearly I am doing something wrong here, how do I check my various pages to see where the problem lies and how do I go about fixing it?
Technical SEO | | SallySerfas0 -
Title and description tags
Hi everyone! What is the maximum length a title tag should be and what range should a seo description be for best practice?
Technical SEO | | PeterM220 -
Use target keyword on several page titles or homepage only?
If I want my homepage to rank for a keyword (ie "red widgets"), does it support or dilute the homepage's rank if I use the keyword on other pages? I can see it working either way: The search engine looks at your site, sees that the target keyword is used throughout the site, and ranks the site higher as a result. Using the keyword on several pages makes it so none of them stand out, and ultimately it's harder to rank highly. Thoughts?
Technical SEO | | Kyle_M0 -
Linking C Class Blocks Problem
Hi 🙂 I've just discovered that my client, who has a medical practice, has created a series of micro sites about their doctors (around 10 or so). The problem is that they're on a shared host with the same C-class, providing no real link benefit at all. Would it be best to: A) Look for seperate C class hosts for each site & migrate B) Recreate the pages on the main site & 301 all doctor micro sites to new pages C) Leave as is and pursue other link building activites? Has anyone run into a similar issue before? Thanks a bunch! Woj
Technical SEO | | wojkwasi0