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Help me choose better titles

by realmaverick
10 replies
  • SEO
    • |
Good morning guys I need a little advice. Last month I made a dumb mistake.

After all the talk of the upcoming over optimisation penalty. As a knee jerk reaction, I oversimplified my titles, across tens of thousands of pages. This resulted in thousands of duplicate titles and a significant loss in traffic.

The website in question is a mobile wallpaper/themes/ringtones and other content.

The titles were: Upload name + Phone Brand + Content type - 3 tags - FILEID

So an example would be Avengers Nokia Theme - movie, super hero, captain america - 453234

I changed them to: Avengers Nokia Theme by username on brand name. (brand name, meaning my own brand name, not Nokia etc).

But this resulted in thousands of duplicate titles and a dramatic loss in traffic. For example a single user could upload 20 black wallpapers and with this current setup, that leads to 20 exact match duplicate titles.

With this in mind, I need to change my titles and fast. But I don't want to make another mistake.

The one I am quite keen to try is:

Avengers Nokia Theme - Tag1, tag2 Themes - on brand name.

So the main variable would be the name of the upload and then the 2 tags, to mix things up a little.

Another option would be to throw the file ID in there somewhere? As that will always be unique. Perhaps the file ID could be in the place of the "wallpapers" after the two tags?

I'd like to keep the domain name, for branding reasons.

The things I have at my disposal are: Upload name, brand, content type (i.e Ringtone), File ID, Username of artist, brand name

Any suggestions are warmly welcomed.

Thanks a lot.
#choose #titles
  • Profile picture of the author Leo Wadsworth
    Is there any way to restore your original database and get the titles back? You won't be hit with over-optimization if you use a keyword once in a title, and it is crucial for the titles to be unique. They also need to be human friendly because that's what Google uses for the anchor text of the search results link.
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    • Profile picture of the author realmaverick
      Hi Leo, thanks for the reply. I could certainly revert the titles, however the only issue there would be, I'd not have my brand name in the title, which is something I wanted to introduce.
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  • Profile picture of the author Leo Wadsworth
    OK - think like a user. If you are looking at the search results, what text would make you most likely to click on the link?

    Also - I'm assuming that you are putting some more details in the meta descriptions, because Google typically uses that for the search result description text if it is not too long (160 characters or less).
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  • Profile picture of the author realmaverick
    Yes, the meta description is made up differently.

    The title, optimally IMO, would be how I have it now. Except when a single user uploads several files of the same name, we have an issue. So we need extra variables, that will set the files apart.

    I could go as simple as just adding the file ID in to what is currently there and avoid the tags entirely. But I'm not sure the ID of the file is enough. Plus it doesn't add any relevancy to the actual title.

    It's quite a tricky decision.
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    • Profile picture of the author Leo Wadsworth
      Originally Posted by realmaverick View Post

      It's quite a tricky decision.
      I hear you! Of course, if it were easy it wouldn't need us perfezzionals to work on it!
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      • Profile picture of the author realmaverick
        Originally Posted by Leo Wadsworth View Post

        I hear you! Of course, if it were easy it wouldn't need us perfezzionals to work on it!
        Yup, I'm usually the one dishing out SEO advice. But this one, I'd love extra opinions on, as it's quite delicate. Especially as I only changed them last month. Google might think I'm up to no good!
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  • Profile picture of the author addaminsane
    I like the idea of simply having a descriptive title with @ brandname.tld amended to the url. This is very effective, can optimize for keywords depending on the domain name, and differentiates your titles from every other similar title on other websites.

    Its a great way to strike a balance between page optimization and unique titles which are rewarded. Unique titles ARE rewarded.

    Additionally when you include characters that stand out such as @ or » or ✓ , Pages get more click throughs. I know this from experience big time.
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  • Profile picture of the author realmaverick
    Hi addaminsane, that is my ideal too. I'm just not sure whether to use the file ID or the tags, to ensure the titles are unique.

    For example, we had a wallpapers contest for brands. One user uploaded about 20 "Nike Wallpapers". Which resulted in 20 titles of Nike Mobile wallpaper by username @brandname.

    The main obstacle, is variable to insert. Tags could certainly help add relevancy but could also look spammy, they don't look great in the SERPs either. A file ID may not be enough to distinguish the file from the others.
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    • Profile picture of the author addaminsane
      Originally Posted by realmaverick View Post

      Hi addaminsane, that is my ideal too. I'm just not sure whether to use the file ID or the tags, to ensure the titles are unique.

      For example, we had a wallpapers contest for brands. One user uploaded about 20 "Nike Wallpapers". Which resulted in 20 titles of Nike Mobile wallpaper by username @brandname.

      The main obstacle, is variable to insert. Tags could certainly help add relevancy but could also look spammy, they don't look great in the SERPs either. A file ID may not be enough to distinguish the file from the others.
      i think you are really going to be forced to differentiate these titles with some sort of tag such as a unique 5 digit number. I don't think looking spammy is an issue at all here. This is simply the nature of the beast when you have other people adding pages to your website.
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  • Profile picture of the author realmaverick
    everybody buggered off to bed?
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