Hello WA Family,
I trust everyone is well.
I wanted to see what is better to use in a long title for a blog post when considering your title for SEO?
Here
You can go with the Minus or line Divider.
If a post, it can be a colon. Or a straight, long-tail keyword.
Not sure about the comma.
I'm an English teacher. Your first one is gramatically correct. A colon is used to indicate that something, usually a list will follow. A hypen/dash, or what you call a minus sign is used to indicate an extension of something.
The comma, although technically gramatically correct, is not a good idea in your headline. I don't believe it will display.
Regardless of what is gramatically correct, all of your choices are acceptable, assuming the comma will display. It's a matter of choice.
If it's my article, I'd go with number 1.
Bob
I have seen (-), (:) and (|) mostly, but lately I see a lot of (:).
I know I'm not using words but I hope you get the message.
Rick
See more comments
Is it better to use colons, commas, line dividers or minus signs in a long blog title?
Hello WA Family,
I trust everyone is well.
I wanted to see what is better to use in a long title for a blog post when considering your title for SEO?
Here
Hi Pastor
I was curious, purely from an SEO point of view, so I entered each of the titles into Google. I found that it made hardly any difference to the SERP results. I also tried one without any punctuation, which also generated the same result.
The only one that came up slightly differently was the title with the "|," which delivered a Google Search Central entry in first place; the second and subsequent results were the same as the others.
So if you want to avoid competing directly with Google Search Central results, avoid using "|."
:-)
Richard
You can go with the Minus or line Divider.
If a post, it can be a colon. Or a straight, long-tail keyword.
Not sure about the comma.
I'm an English teacher. Your first one is gramatically correct. A colon is used to indicate that something, usually a list will follow. A hypen/dash, or what you call a minus sign is used to indicate an extension of something.
The comma, although technically gramatically correct, is not a good idea in your headline. I don't believe it will display.
Regardless of what is gramatically correct, all of your choices are acceptable, assuming the comma will display. It's a matter of choice.
If it's my article, I'd go with number 1.
Bob
I have seen (-), (:) and (|) mostly, but lately I see a lot of (:).
I know I'm not using words but I hope you get the message.
Rick
See more comments
Hello Family,
I trust everyone is well.
I wanted to see if anyone has an updated SEO checklist for 2024.
Here is the latest list that I have.
1. Key
Hi PastorDre
Excellent list.
A couple of comments on links:
For the external link to be useful to Google, it needs to be set up as Follow. If Google can't follow, the link still adds value to readers but not to Google.
I've seen anecdotes that 3 internal links may be as valuable as 1 external follow link.
That's difficult to prove, but there's no harm in adding extra, appropriate internal links.
:-)
Richard
Hi Richard,
It seems that opinion is divided about your statement. Please take a look at the attached image. Thank you.
Hi Diana
In my comment, I didn't suggest that follow or no-follow is better than the other!
I simply pointed out what happens if FOLLOW is used.
In practice, Rank Math's take on this is arguable and technically not true (I use Rank Math myself, by the way). I could expand on this, but I think it'd be too long for a comment.
:-)
Richard
Hi Richard,
Indeed, you said that external links should be set up as follows. I brought a contrary specification. I also use Rank Math, and this was just an example. Some members recommend external links set as nofollow.
In the end, opinions are divided, and everything is confused. I don't know which recommendation is the most appropriate.
Diana.
Actually Diana, I did not say "external links should be set up as follows" etc...
I said:
"For the external link to be useful to Google, it needs to be set up as Follow. If Google can't follow, the link still adds value to readers but not to Google."
I.e., you seem to be putting words in that I didn't use.
My statement was a statement of fact.
I agree that opinions on follow or no-follow for external links are divided. I didn't offer an opinion; I simply stated what would happen if Follow was used.
:-)
Richard
Can you find an internal WA link? Did the magnifying glass not work for you now? (jk)
Thanks. 😁
See more comments
Does anyone have an seo checklist for 2024?
Hello Family,
I trust everyone is well.
I wanted to see if anyone has an updated SEO checklist for 2024.
Here is the latest list that I have.
1. Key
Hi PastorDre
Excellent list.
A couple of comments on links:
For the external link to be useful to Google, it needs to be set up as Follow. If Google can't follow, the link still adds value to readers but not to Google.
I've seen anecdotes that 3 internal links may be as valuable as 1 external follow link.
That's difficult to prove, but there's no harm in adding extra, appropriate internal links.
:-)
Richard
Hi Richard,
It seems that opinion is divided about your statement. Please take a look at the attached image. Thank you.
Hi Diana
In my comment, I didn't suggest that follow or no-follow is better than the other!
I simply pointed out what happens if FOLLOW is used.
In practice, Rank Math's take on this is arguable and technically not true (I use Rank Math myself, by the way). I could expand on this, but I think it'd be too long for a comment.
:-)
Richard
Hi Richard,
Indeed, you said that external links should be set up as follows. I brought a contrary specification. I also use Rank Math, and this was just an example. Some members recommend external links set as nofollow.
In the end, opinions are divided, and everything is confused. I don't know which recommendation is the most appropriate.
Diana.
Actually Diana, I did not say "external links should be set up as follows" etc...
I said:
"For the external link to be useful to Google, it needs to be set up as Follow. If Google can't follow, the link still adds value to readers but not to Google."
I.e., you seem to be putting words in that I didn't use.
My statement was a statement of fact.
I agree that opinions on follow or no-follow for external links are divided. I didn't offer an opinion; I simply stated what would happen if Follow was used.
:-)
Richard
Can you find an internal WA link? Did the magnifying glass not work for you now? (jk)
Thanks. 😁
See more comments
Hello WA Family, I trust everyone is well. I wanted to see if anyone knows why my website is producing duplicate page titles.
I did a seo test on my site and it is sayi
Go to SEMRUSH to check for website errors. Your post, page, category or tag should not have the same title. If not, it will become duplicate page titles.
Meta descriptions also must be individual, cannot have same meta descriptions for post, page, category and tag. That is what I learned from SEMRUSH.
I made a lot of these mistakes, takes months to clear all errors.
I'm not sure I can explain this without making it sound overcomplicated, sorry!
Your REAL post/page titles are solely controlled by YOU.
At a guess, you may be talking about what initially appears to be "duplicate titles" in Google Search Console.
However, if you look closely at the titles in Google Search Console you'll typically see another word in brackets just after the title:
(tag) (feed) (category) (author)
Google works differently from us humans, so often there are many different "versions" of posts/pages created by various SITEMAPS.
It's not actually a big issue, but Google has a "crawl budget" for every website that they visit.
So, they will crawl every single post/page on your website (or as many as they can) when the "Google Bots" visit your website.
That being said, the more "irrelevant" posts/pages you have marked as "index", the more you are wasting the Google crawl budget, i.e. they may not crawl new post/pages immediately when the "Google Bots" visit your website.
This also explains the "Discovered - Not Yet Indexed" post/pages you'll see in the "INDEXING" section of Google Search Console.
Basically, Google knows about your new articles, but they haven't indexed them yet because they didn't have "time" on their last visit because they spent a lot of time crawling "irrelevant pages".
Don't worry, for "discovered - not yet indexed" the Google bots will come back and visit them again, and will index them if they deem they are suitable to be included in their index.
(Crawled - Not Yet Indexed IS an issue, this means that the Google Bots HAVE crawled those articles, but they didn't deem them suitable to be included in their index, e.g. thin content, content too similar to what's already on your website, Google believes there isn't any interest in that subject, etc.)
This is also why I always mark my cateogries and tags in WordPress as NO INDEX.
I don't want to waste my "crawl budget" on irrelevant pages.
Have a check on Google Search Console first and see if the "duplicate titles" contain one of the above words in brackets.
Realistically, you DON'T want the (tag) (feed) (category) (author) versions to be indexed, you want the REAL urls of your posts/pages to be indexed.
It doesn't have any impact on the ranking and SEO of your website's articles by the way, so you're not suffering, losing out, or being penalized for having these.
As I say, it just "wastes crawl budget", so some of your articles may not be getting indexed straight away.
Does this Make Sense?
If not, I'll try to simplify it a bit more (but basically check if the "duplicate titles" have (tag) (feed) (category) (author) after them.
Partha
There are a few common reasons for duplicate titles:
Content Management Systems (CMS): Some CMS platforms may automatically generate duplicate titles if pages share similar templates or settings.
Manual Mistakes: Human error can also lead to duplicate titles when creating or updating content.
Pagination: If your site uses pagination for long lists of items, like product pages, the titles for each page in the series may look similar.
URL Parameters: Sometimes, URL parameters can result in different URLs with the same title.
Which site are you referring to and whose SEO test were you using?
Without knowing the answers to those two points, I would only be guessing.
Though you may find the following forum chat helpful: https://moz.com/community/q/topic/50230/duplicate-page-and-title-issues
Hope this helps you.
Did you find that forum chat helpful at all?
That site is like all of the others that serve up canned reports, as the script used to provide these reports, all come from the same resource: SeOpTimer dot com, so I wouldn't be so quick to believe unless you had a method of using another totally different script to see if that tool stated the same thing.
Either way, that forum chat may be the help you need.
Hello there, I looked through the form, but found it a little difficult to find the answer. Thank you though.
Did the report show you an example of your duplicate header or was it stating that you have used H1 tag more than once on each post?
H1 is only meant to ever be used once, and therefore using H2, H3, H4, and H5 are meant to be used in the body of your post.
See more comments
Why is my website producing duplicate page titles?
Hello WA Family, I trust everyone is well. I wanted to see if anyone knows why my website is producing duplicate page titles.
I did a seo test on my site and it is sayi
Go to SEMRUSH to check for website errors. Your post, page, category or tag should not have the same title. If not, it will become duplicate page titles.
Meta descriptions also must be individual, cannot have same meta descriptions for post, page, category and tag. That is what I learned from SEMRUSH.
I made a lot of these mistakes, takes months to clear all errors.
I'm not sure I can explain this without making it sound overcomplicated, sorry!
Your REAL post/page titles are solely controlled by YOU.
At a guess, you may be talking about what initially appears to be "duplicate titles" in Google Search Console.
However, if you look closely at the titles in Google Search Console you'll typically see another word in brackets just after the title:
(tag) (feed) (category) (author)
Google works differently from us humans, so often there are many different "versions" of posts/pages created by various SITEMAPS.
It's not actually a big issue, but Google has a "crawl budget" for every website that they visit.
So, they will crawl every single post/page on your website (or as many as they can) when the "Google Bots" visit your website.
That being said, the more "irrelevant" posts/pages you have marked as "index", the more you are wasting the Google crawl budget, i.e. they may not crawl new post/pages immediately when the "Google Bots" visit your website.
This also explains the "Discovered - Not Yet Indexed" post/pages you'll see in the "INDEXING" section of Google Search Console.
Basically, Google knows about your new articles, but they haven't indexed them yet because they didn't have "time" on their last visit because they spent a lot of time crawling "irrelevant pages".
Don't worry, for "discovered - not yet indexed" the Google bots will come back and visit them again, and will index them if they deem they are suitable to be included in their index.
(Crawled - Not Yet Indexed IS an issue, this means that the Google Bots HAVE crawled those articles, but they didn't deem them suitable to be included in their index, e.g. thin content, content too similar to what's already on your website, Google believes there isn't any interest in that subject, etc.)
This is also why I always mark my cateogries and tags in WordPress as NO INDEX.
I don't want to waste my "crawl budget" on irrelevant pages.
Have a check on Google Search Console first and see if the "duplicate titles" contain one of the above words in brackets.
Realistically, you DON'T want the (tag) (feed) (category) (author) versions to be indexed, you want the REAL urls of your posts/pages to be indexed.
It doesn't have any impact on the ranking and SEO of your website's articles by the way, so you're not suffering, losing out, or being penalized for having these.
As I say, it just "wastes crawl budget", so some of your articles may not be getting indexed straight away.
Does this Make Sense?
If not, I'll try to simplify it a bit more (but basically check if the "duplicate titles" have (tag) (feed) (category) (author) after them.
Partha
There are a few common reasons for duplicate titles:
Content Management Systems (CMS): Some CMS platforms may automatically generate duplicate titles if pages share similar templates or settings.
Manual Mistakes: Human error can also lead to duplicate titles when creating or updating content.
Pagination: If your site uses pagination for long lists of items, like product pages, the titles for each page in the series may look similar.
URL Parameters: Sometimes, URL parameters can result in different URLs with the same title.
Which site are you referring to and whose SEO test were you using?
Without knowing the answers to those two points, I would only be guessing.
Though you may find the following forum chat helpful: https://moz.com/community/q/topic/50230/duplicate-page-and-title-issues
Hope this helps you.
Did you find that forum chat helpful at all?
That site is like all of the others that serve up canned reports, as the script used to provide these reports, all come from the same resource: SeOpTimer dot com, so I wouldn't be so quick to believe unless you had a method of using another totally different script to see if that tool stated the same thing.
Either way, that forum chat may be the help you need.
Hello there, I looked through the form, but found it a little difficult to find the answer. Thank you though.
Did the report show you an example of your duplicate header or was it stating that you have used H1 tag more than once on each post?
H1 is only meant to ever be used once, and therefore using H2, H3, H4, and H5 are meant to be used in the body of your post.
See more comments
Hi Pastor
I was curious, purely from an SEO point of view, so I entered each of the titles into Google. I found that it made hardly any difference to the SERP results. I also tried one without any punctuation, which also generated the same result.
The only one that came up slightly differently was the title with the "|," which delivered a Google Search Central entry in first place; the second and subsequent results were the same as the others.
So if you want to avoid competing directly with Google Search Central results, avoid using "|."
:-)
Richard
Thank you.