Page Title restructuring
-
Hey Mozers!
Surely you have noticed Google has been randomly restructuring our Page Titles to emphasize branding by placing the company/brand first, as opposed to after the "|" - a convention we had been accustomed to.
I am wondering if the aforementioned warrants restructuring our client's (where branding is important) Page Titles as per Google's lead, or simply staying on the sidelines for now and letting Google do it?
Anyone care to share their take on this?
Thanks!
Dino
-
First, Google doesn't do this for an entire site, at any given time, so it's best you take the time to work on client sites/pages and optimize the TITLES and DESCRIPTION you want to use. If Google uses /or changes anything for pages you have written descriptions, titles or page content, they won't advise you either.
Google's updates of these page titles, is very common when they feel the title they use for the SERP index to be more useful or accurate of the page's content. Watch for very long titles, as they are more prone to being identified by them, and rewritten
Yes, it can be quite frustrating, but it's not a total loss when working on sites.
Even if Google does change something, you can still make changes to the client site pages that might have been rewritten by Google, and hope that your new updated page info is taken over the Google TITLE rewrite..
This was a good post on BLOG. SEOmofo had a really good posting as well about this very topic.
Barry had a small but good to the point post on Google Title Rewrites at SE Round Table too
Hope some of this helps point you in the right direction!
Cheers,
-
Dino,
I would check out this QA string as it covers exactly what you are concerned about:http://moz.com/community/q/page-title-structure
I would definitely check out the SEO cheat sheet they references in the string.
Ron
-
I haven't noticed this on the sites that I manage. The only time I've had Google construct a title has been when the title we wrote was too long. I have seen many instances where Google is extracting an excerpt from the "description" as market up with Structured Data instead of using the meta description we have written. I find this frustrating because we have recently spent a good amount of time optimizing our meta descriptions and now, the majority of the time, Google seems to be favoring what we've marked up with structured data.
Have you examined your titles to see if perhaps there is a reason that Google is doing this? Could it be an idosyncracy of your CMS perhaps, or if not, could it be that something was programmed internally to insert the brand at the front of the tag programmatically? Just some thoughts!
Dana
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
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
-
Page optimised and SEO ranking
Hi SEO is new to myself and I'm still trying to get my head round it. My friend and myself run a DJ company in our spare time but we are desperately trying to rank higher to increase our visibility. we have worked hard on our page optimisation and scoring high 90's, we'd love to invest in someone to do it, but simply dont have that kinda cash at the moment. I'm aware that some pages need meta description and alt image text, which is what I'm now working on, but even other sites with lower percentage are ranking higher. is this due to recent changes and google not ranking our pages? Will our ranking improve over time and how long should it be before we see any changes.
Branding | | Bluice0 -
Different Font of Meta Titles in SERP
Hi there, Does anyone know how they managed to get a different font in the meta title on this page, directly in SERP? www seorestart cz It's even differently in the source code of the page (try to google it with "site:" operator). I thought CSS has now power over this and I couldn't find anything else what might be the trick. Thanks for any answer. Cheers,
Branding | | benesmartin
Martin0 -
Case Study Formats - On-page vs. PDF
Hey all, I've been thinking about the pros and cons of case study formats (On-page vs. PDF), and was curious to see what you all think. An on-page case study is crawled by search engines and has fewer barriers in terms of visibility. The only pros I can think of for a downloadable case study (with no opt-in) is that it's less likely to be plagiarised (generally a low priority) and can have a custom design that may not fit with your website's look and feel without clashing. Also, I suppose it makes it easier for visitors to save the PDF for future reference. Have I missed anything? Do you have a preference? Keen to hear which you prefer, and why. Let's brainstorm! Cheers,
Branding | | carlod
Carlo1 -
Google Changing the Title Tag to Your Brand
A while back google started changing our title tags to have our name in it, which was great and reasonable for the most part. We recently ran into a problem with it as we have some properties on our site that fall under a dba. Here is the example. Title tag: Kolea- Waikoloa Vacation Rentals
Branding | | RobDalton
Kolea is a vacation rental community is a resort called Waikoloa. Waikoloa Vacation Rentals is our company name and www.waikoloavacationrentals.com is our company site. Here is the problem:
Title tag: Hualalai Resort- Waikoloa Vacation Rentals
Hualalai is a completely different place than Waikoloa and we do business in there as Hualalai Vacation Rentals, but keep our properties on our www.waikoloavacationrentals.com site rather than microsites. How can you let google know that what they are doing is incorrect for specific pages? Thanks,0 -
Should I add follow my followers in a company page on G+ ?
Hi All, On one hand, if I follow them they are happy and receive a notice that they are being followed and will probably be more agile to plus my writings. On the other, it is unreasonable for me to follow everyone... and I think that as a brand I should watch very carefully who I follow. Thanks
Branding | | BeytzNet0 -
Can anything be done for a single brand page on a corporate site?
I was asked by a friend if there was anyway I could help promote the watch brand that they are responsible for. The brand has only one page on the corporate site. http://gevrilgroup.com/fortis-watches/ My first reaction is that this is impossible to do without creating a stand alone web site and then doing some super cool marketing to get your brand noticed out of the sea of watch manufacturers. My second gut reaction is to stand clear of this request and not get myself tangled in something that will require a lot of resources for someone on a low budget. Any suggestions?
Branding | | irvingw0 -
Facebook Like of Root Domain Linked To Facebook Page
If I install a Facebook Like Button on my Root Domain, How can I have the likes accumulated from that button augment those already on my brand's page? Thank you fellow knowledgenies of the Book of Face.
Branding | | Blobe0 -
Link local online newspaper ad to newspaper's spash page or my site?
We just started advertising on the web version of our local newspaper. They suggest our ads go to a "splash page" they created for us on their site. The page haslinks , images and text taken from each of our main categories,. Plus links and feeds from our twitter and facebook pages. And a google map. This page shows a page authority 1 with 0 links. Is there any reason to link our ad to a page like this rather than going direct to our website page? Thank you Handcrafter
Branding | | stephenfishman0