What's the right way to gain the benefits of an EMD but avoid cramming the title?
-
Hi Guys,
Say I'm (completely hypothetically) building weddingvenuesnewyork.com and right now I'm organizing the tags for each page. What's the best layout so that I can optimize for "wedding venues new york" as much as possible without it becoming spammy.
Right now I'm looking at something like "Wedding Venues New York: Wedding Receptions and Ceremony Venues" for the title.. To get other strong keywords in there too.
Is there a better layout/structure?.. And is having the first words of the title on the homepage the same as the domain name going to strengthen the ranking for that term, or look spammy to Google and be a bad move? This is a new site being built
-
Thanks Ross!
-
wow that excellent if your domain is ranking so early in its development. That probably shows that you really should avoid the risk of any keyword stuffing, as your domain and your content will do the work for you!
As far as I know the meta desc is roughly 155 characters but it's not always set in stone. It may be that Moz adds this ellipsis in order to limit a meta desc truncating mid-word.
-
Hey Thanks David, I've noticed that without even having an EMD site half way built (but having it live on the domain while things have been put together) it's actually started to rank for the main phase.
Albeit on the 24th page, but still I haven't done anything to it content-wise or tag-wise so it surprised me a bit.
Can I ask you something I just noticed about the SERPs from the link you just posted: I thought that the limit for a meta description is about 165 characters. Some of the results for MOZ in that link have been cut off after 135/140.
It the 165 estimate exactly that, and estimate, or should 165/170 characters always be displayed in results?
-
Hi Joel,
We have exactly the same problem with our EMD site. It's a fine line between phrase targeting and keyword stuffing. (especially when you see stuffing doing well in the SERPS!)
We have found that the URL is quite a strong indicator to google so if your keywords are in there, then the title doesn't need to be too keyword heavy, which I think your suggested example is.
It may also be worth considering putting your brand name into your titles just like Moz do: https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=site%3Amoz&oq=site%3Amoz&aqs=chrome.0.57l2j58j59l2j60.1582j0&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8#safe=off&sclient=psy-ab&q=site:moz.com&oq=site:moz.com&gs_l=serp.3...1015.1455.0.1619.4.4.0.0.0.0.106.400.1j3.4.0...0.0.0..1c.1.17.psy-ab.gdYtgeZmNoQ&pbx=1&bav=on.2,or.r_cp.r_qf.&bvm=bv.47883778,d.ZG4&fp=b708dfac7b585b5e&biw=1360&bih=667
Hope this helps.
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
-
Infinite Scrolling on Publisher Sites - is VentureBeat's implementation really SEO-friendly?
I've just begun a new project auditing the site of a news publisher. In order to increase pageviews and thus increase advertising revenue, at some point in the past they implemented something so that as many as 5 different articles load per article page. All articles are loaded at the same time and from looking in Google's cache and the errors flagged up in Search Console, Google treats it as one big mass of content, not separate pages. Another thing to note is that when a user scrolls down, the URL does in fact change when you get to the next article. My initial thought was to remove this functionality and just load one article per page. However I happened to notice that VentureBeat.com uses something similar. They use infinite scrolling so that the other articles on the page (in a 'feed' style) only load when a user scrolls to the bottom of the first article. I checked Google's cached versions of the pages and it seems that Google also only reads the first article which seems like an ideal solution. This obviously has the benefit of additionally speeding up loading time of the page too. My question is, is VentureBeat's implementation actually that SEO-friendly or not. VentureBeat have 'sort of' followed Google's guidelines with regards to how to implement infinite scrolling https://webmasters.googleblog.com/2014/02/infinite-scroll-search-friendly.html by using prev and next tags for pagination https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/1663744?hl=en. However isn't the point of pagination to list multiple pages in a series (i.e. page 2, page 3, page 4 etc.) rather than just other related articles? Here's an example - http://venturebeat.com/2016/11/11/facebooks-cto-explains-social-networks-10-year-mission-global-connectivity-ai-vr/ Would be interesting to know if someone has dealt with this first-hand or just has an opinion. Thanks in advance! Daniel
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Daniel_Morgan1 -
Spam signals from old company site are hurting new company site, but we can't undo the redirect.
My client was forced to change its domain name last year (long story). We were largely able to regain our organic rankings via 301-redirects. Recently, the rankings for the new domain have begun to plummet. Nothing specific took place that could have caused any ranking declines on the new site. However, when we analyze links to the OLD site, we are seeing a lot of link spam being built to that old domain over recent weeks and months. We have no idea where these are coming from but they appear to be negatively impacting our new site. We cannot dismantle the redirects as the old site has hundreds, if not thousands, of quality links pointing to it, and many customers are accustomed to going to that home page. So those redirects need to stay in place. We have already disavowed all the spam we have found on the old Search Console. We are continuing to do so as we find new spam links. But what are we supposed to do about this spam negatively impacting our new site? FYI we have not received any messages in the search console.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | FPD_NYC1 -
Traffic exchange referral URL's
We have a client who once per month is being hit by easyihts4u.com and it is creating huge increases in their referrals. All the hits go to one page specifically. From the research we have done, this site and others like it, are not spam bots. We cannot understand how they choose sites to target and what good it does for them, or our client to have hits all on one days to one page? We created a filter in analytics to create what we think is a more accurate reflection of traffic. Should be block them at the server level as well?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Teamzig0 -
Why my banklinks haven't been removed?
Hi Everyone So I had over 1500 backlinks in under month, and i found out it was coming from a directory. I asked them to delist me from the directory, but it still shows i have these links pointing to me. How do I get completely take them down? Also I contacted myseotools who I use and they said "It is most likely because you have some dynamic pages that can create thousands of various URLs. Maybe a directory? This is not an issue with our software as it comes directly from ahrefs. Try going to ahrefs.com and enter your domain to see where all the links are coming from." I proceeded to do this and its definely coming from that 1 directory. They said they have removed me from they directory, but my question is I can still see I have 1500 backlinks coming from their domain? Does this take time to clear? Or have I missed something in the process?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | edward-may0 -
Low quality websites with spammy EMDs still ranking higher than genuine websites?
Hey guys, I've just been doing some searching and couldn't quite contemplate how heavily low-quality and spammy EMDs are still running some Google searches. Just take "cheap kitchens", for instance. Here are a list of URLs that appeared; http://kitchenunitsdoors.co.uk/ http://www.kitchenunits9.co.uk/ http://www.aboutkitchenunits.co.uk/ http://www.cheapkitchenunits1.co.uk/ http://www.cheapkitchensonline.com/ http://www.buycheapkitchens.com/ http://www.cheapkitchenscheapkitchen.co.uk/ http://www.cheapkitchensforsale1.co.uk/ http://cheapkitchensaberdeen.co.uk/ http://www.kitchensderby1.co.uk/ http://www.cheapcheapkitchens.co.uk/ http://kitchen-cheap.co.uk/ http://www.cheapestkitchensinbritain.co.uk/ http://www.cheapkitchenss.co.uk/ http://www.cheaperthanmfi.com/ http://cheapkitchenuk.co.uk/ As you can see, none of them appear to be genuine retailers and are setup purely to influence Google rankings. I'm amazed that Google is still giving so much weight to these types of sites - especially considering how search is meant to be better than it ever was before! Any insights into why this is?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Webrevolve0 -
Website Hacked now it's not Ranking
One of my domains was hacked right before I took over managing it. The hacker created around 100 links for simply grotesque things. After I took over I erased the entire site, rebuilt from scratch, new server (inmotion), rewrote every page, robots.txt every offending page, and even 301 just in case 404s were hurting me. I am now almost a month in and I have seen zero movement on anything rankings based. This is not a bad domain it was registered in 2008 and has a few decent citations because of the Doc's medical license. They registered for BBB in November and have a 30 year old listing citation from them based on business establishment. I must be going crazy but it's not ranking for anything except the homepage. I didn't know Google could hold a grudge for so long. The only ranking I can sometimes achieve is through Google Places which still has to compete with tough domains. I've already put in a reconsideration request and received a response stating the following: We reviewed your site and found no manual actions by the webspam team that might affect your site's ranking in Google. There's no need to file a reconsideration request for your site, because any ranking issues you may be experiencing are not related to a manual action taken by the webspam team. Just check it for yourself I know it's a work in progress but I'm not even considered relevant on page 50! And the crap links are still indexed!! A search for a keyword I'm aiming for with my client's name followed after gives me no results. I am currently using wordpress, yoast xml, and single keyword focusses. My market is tough but no way I can not rank for the keyword and my name.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | allenrocks0 -
In (or In-between) 2 cities - and mentioning both cities in title tags
Hi, just wondering what your thoughts are on this one - several businesses I work for are located in in-between places. For example, one is in one city for its address, but in another city's council (/state) area. Another is in a rural area, almost exactly the same distance between 2 cities (about 10 miles either way). Both businesses mention both cities on several pages of their websites, including in title tags (including homepage title tags), and it seems to be working OK in terms of rankings (ie they're ranking well for keyphrases for both cities). Is it acceptable practice to mention both cities in a single title tag though? That's my question. (some of this confusion dates back to UK local authority boundary/name changes, in 2009)
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | McTaggart0 -
How to run SEO tests you don't want to be associated with
A client has a competitor who is ranking above them for a highly competitive term they shouldn't really be able to rank for. I think I know how the site got there, and I think I can replicate it myself with a quick test, but it's definitely grey hat if not black hat to do so. I do not want my own sites and company to be damamged by the test, but i'd like to let the client know for sure, and also i'd love to know myself. The test should take about a week to run, there is no hacking involved or password stealing or anything damaging to another. How would you do such a test? I'm dubious about using my own server / site for it, but would a week really matter? Tom
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | lethal0r0