[Pro] IE browser tabs not showing page title

waltd · March 7, 2011, 6:53pm

It’s quite fashionable in SEO circles at the moment to put as many of
your keywords in the filename and path as will fit. This is one of the
first places that a search engine will look to find matches to a
query, so if your page is http://example.com/fluffy-bunny-pictures/pink-bunny-pictures.html
, you’ve pretty much won the war for all persons searching for fluffy
pink bunny photos.

Walter

On Mar 7, 2011, at 1:44 PM, Craig wrote:

Wow. This is something else I didn’t know. I’m curious, is there a
situation where long file names would make sense?

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Craig1 · March 7, 2011, 6:54pm

Dave:
The top part of my last post got cut off:

Dave said: “But you can hardly call ‘index, about, services, contact’ descriptive!”

Yep. I misspoke when I called ‘index, about, services, contact’ descriptive. What I should have said is these are short, easily understood file names. When I am working with Freeway, the column of “titles” on the left hand side of the screen, take up a lot of screen space.

I think it would be more useful if Freeway showed the file names (instead of the titles) in the left-hand column under Site Folder.

Craig

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Craig1 · March 7, 2011, 7:19pm

Walt,

Good example. But, how practical is it to stuff keywords into the title? Is there a limit to how large (and stuffed) a title can be?

It seems a bit too good to be true (or to last). Kind of like keyword stuffing in the old days. Is this something Google is likely to clamp down on?

Craig

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waltd · March 7, 2011, 7:31pm

Well, as a practical limit, 256 characters is the longest URL that IE
can handle, so that’s your limit. As to Google clamping down on this,
they may decide to devalue it if there’s a huge disconnect between
filename and actual page content. That’s at the heart of all of their
various anti-spam systems. They really don’t want to punish people for
trying to get higher rankings, but they do want to punish people who
set out to mislead others – that looks bad for them, so they put a
lot of effort into it.

This may not guarantee the “juice” now or forever, I have seen a
number of what I suspect were automated “wildcard” URLs in search
results, stuff that was too cunningly close to http://example.com/your-search-terms-here-exactly.html
for any reasonable person to believe they were true, so there may
indeed be a crackdown looming. But again, if your site offers quality
content, and is well known and liked (and linked) in your industry,
then anything you do vis-a-vis SEO is icing on the cake.

Walter

On Mar 7, 2011, at 2:19 PM, Craig wrote:

Walt,

Good example. But, how practical is it to stuff keywords into the
title? Is there a limit to how large (and stuffed) a title can be?

It seems a bit too good to be true (or to last). Kind of like
keyword stuffing in the old days. Is this something Google is likely
to clamp down on?

Craig

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Craig1 · March 7, 2011, 8:00pm

Walt,

I notice you refer to “256 characters in the longest URL” and later “automated ‘wildcard’ URLs”. How does this relate to “stuffing keywords into the Title”? Is stuffing keywords into both Title and URL popular SEO tricks now?

I know that Google gives significance to the Title, but I had always considered the main purpose of the Title as helping humans know what page they were on.

Is it currently considered ‘best practice’ to add related keywords to every Title? If so, do the keywords need to be in a human-readable sentence? For example:

Seattle Nursery - Home: Your source for conifer trees, deciduous trees, and shrubs since 1989

or

Seattle Nursery - Home: conifer trees, deciduous trees, shrubs

Craig

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waltd · March 7, 2011, 8:16pm

On Mar 7, 2011, at 3:00 PM, Craig wrote:

Walt,

I notice you refer to “256 characters in the longest URL” and later
“automated ‘wildcard’ URLs”. How does this relate to “stuffing
keywords into the Title”? Is stuffing keywords into both Title and
URL popular SEO tricks now?

I have seen a lot of it lately. Particularly Title tags so long that
they wrap off the browser window and onto the floor!

I know that Google gives significance to the Title, but I had always
considered the main purpose of the Title as helping humans know what
page they were on.

Like most things SEO, they started out that way. People noticed that
Google was still reading them, unlike Meta tags, and started stuffing
as much text in there as they could fit.

Is it currently considered ‘best practice’ to add related keywords
to every Title? If so, do the keywords need to be in a human-
readable sentence? For example:

Seattle Nursery - Home: Your source for conifer trees, deciduous
trees, and shrubs since 1989

or

Seattle Nursery - Home: conifer trees, deciduous trees, shrubs

I’ve seen both, and I’ll reiterate my mantra in these matters. “Be
good. Be honest. Be liked.” All the tricks in the world will get you
ahead once, or for a little while. They will not sustain you or your
client, or improve your reputation in the long term.

Walter

Craig

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Craig1 · March 7, 2011, 8:23pm

Walt,

Good advice as always.

Thank you!

Craig

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Frank_H · March 7, 2011, 9:12pm

Hello,

I have been following this thread but I am not getting results. I have changed the index page title in the inspector from Terry’s Tree Service Home Page to Terry’s-Tree-Service-Home-trimming-removal-trimmers-services : these are the most popular key words for the business, about 60 characters. I have been able to change the document title max to 120, above that dialogue window opens and states amount is over limit. Uploaded the republished pages and the navigation bar (at the site) still reads:

http://www.terrystreeservice.com/index.html

Am I missing something?

Frank

On Mar 7, 2011, at 11:31 AM, Walter Lee Davis wrote:

Well, as a practical limit, 256 characters is the longest URL that IE can handle, so that’s your limit. As to Google clamping down on this, they may decide to devalue it if there’s a huge disconnect between filename and actual page content. That’s at the heart of all of their various anti-spam systems. They really don’t want to punish people for trying to get higher rankings, but they do want to punish people who set out to mislead others – that looks bad for them, so they put a lot of effort into it.

This may not guarantee the “juice” now or forever, I have seen a number of what I suspect were automated “wildcard” URLs in search results, stuff that was too cunningly close to http://example.com/your-search-terms-here-exactly.html for any reasonable person to believe they were true, so there may indeed be a crackdown looming. But again, if your site offers quality content, and is well known and liked (and linked) in your industry, then anything you do vis-a-vis SEO is icing on the cake.

Walter

On Mar 7, 2011, at 2:19 PM, Craig wrote:

Walt,

Good example. But, how practical is it to stuff keywords into the title? Is there a limit to how large (and stuffed) a title can be?

It seems a bit too good to be true (or to last). Kind of like keyword stuffing in the old days. Is this something Google is likely to clamp down on?

Craig

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Frank_H · March 7, 2011, 10:04pm

Hello again,

Sorry, I have gotten some results. The desired string is now in the title of the services page, but not the index- or home page, should this make a difference to search engine bots?
Thanks

Frank

On Mar 7, 2011, at 1:12 PM, Frank H wrote:

Hello,

I have been following this thread but I am not getting results. I have changed the index page title in the inspector from Terry’s Tree Service Home Page to Terry’s-Tree-Service-Home-trimming-removal-trimmers-services : these are the most popular key words for the business, about 60 characters. I have been able to change the document title max to 120, above that dialogue window opens and states amount is over limit. Uploaded the republished pages and the navigation bar (at the site) still reads:

http://www.terrystreeservice.com/index.html

Am I missing something?

Frank

On Mar 7, 2011, at 11:31 AM, Walter Lee Davis wrote:

Well, as a practical limit, 256 characters is the longest URL that IE can handle, so that’s your limit. As to Google clamping down on this, they may decide to devalue it if there’s a huge disconnect between filename and actual page content. That’s at the heart of all of their various anti-spam systems. They really don’t want to punish people for trying to get higher rankings, but they do want to punish people who set out to mislead others – that looks bad for them, so they put a lot of effort into it.

This may not guarantee the “juice” now or forever, I have seen a number of what I suspect were automated “wildcard” URLs in search results, stuff that was too cunningly close to http://example.com/your-search-terms-here-exactly.html for any reasonable person to believe they were true, so there may indeed be a crackdown looming. But again, if your site offers quality content, and is well known and liked (and linked) in your industry, then anything you do vis-a-vis SEO is icing on the cake.

Walter

On Mar 7, 2011, at 2:19 PM, Craig wrote:

Walt,

Good example. But, how practical is it to stuff keywords into the title? Is there a limit to how large (and stuffed) a title can be?

It seems a bit too good to be true (or to last). Kind of like keyword stuffing in the old days. Is this something Google is likely to clamp down on?

Craig

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David_McCallum · March 7, 2011, 10:48pm

You have as your Title

Terry’s-Tree-Service-Home-trimming-removal-trimmers-services

It is not necessary to have hyphens in the Title text - it doesn’t make for easy reading.

It would make more sense to have Terry’s Tree Service | Home Trimming and Removal

The index page (home page) will always be called index.html - you cant really do anything about it or it wont be found as the opening page of your site.

It is the file names and titles of your other pages that you can influence

ie aboutus.html could be about-our-tree-services.html with a title of

Terry’s Tree Service | About our services

David

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David_McCallum · March 7, 2011, 10:51pm

Just noticed your services page

terry’s-tree-services-trimming-removal-trimmers-stumpgrinding-service.html

Be very careful about using unsafe characters in your file names like apostrophes. Instead stick to underscores and hyphens.

D

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Frank_H · March 8, 2011, 1:40am

Thank you very much David, I think I’ve got the concept now.

Frank

On Mar 7, 2011, at 2:48 PM, DeltaDave wrote:

You have as your Title

Terry’s-Tree-Service-Home-trimming-removal-trimmers-services

It is not necessary to have hyphens in the Title text - it doesn’t make for easy reading.

It would make more sense to have Terry’s Tree Service | Home Trimming and Removal

The index page (home page) will always be called index.html - you cant really do anything about it or it wont be found as the opening page of your site.

It is the file names and titles of your other pages that you can influence

ie aboutus.html could be about-our-tree-services.html with a title of

Terry’s Tree Service | About our services

David

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Frank_H · March 8, 2011, 1:49am

OH! Thanks again!
Frank

On Mar 7, 2011, at 2:51 PM, DeltaDave wrote:

Just noticed your services page

terry’s-tree-services-trimming-removal-trimmers-stumpgrinding-service.html

Be very careful about using unsafe characters in your file names like apostrophes. Instead stick to underscores and hyphens.

D

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