Set meta title per page separate to page title
26 posts,
8 voices
96 posts
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meta title is an important SEO element and needs to contain target SEO keywords. I can’t see any (simple) method to set meta title independently of page title. I have pages called ‘Home’, ‘About Us’, ‘Team’, etc. and want the meta title for each to read ‘Company Name – Description with keywords’. I can see one solution – using the breadcrumbs field and hacking out the HTML contained in that field. Not pretty. ;) Any suggestions, please? |
486 posts
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What I typically do is use the title for the title element and create a separate Page Part for the h1 element. You could do it the other way around of course. It doesn’t matter. |
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96 posts
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Thanks for the tip, but I want to keep the Page title simple for identification within Frog – ‘Home’, ‘About Us’, etc. Also, the site is going to be handed over to non-techy users, so I don’t want to force them to have to add Page Parts every time they create a page. Unless someone has another suggestion, I’m going to have to hack ‘Breadcrumb’ to become ‘Title’. :( Really there needs to be a Title field in the Metadata section – it’s the most important meta tag! |
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486 posts
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yeah a field for title would be nice. |
191 posts
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Based on what I’ve read over the years at SEOMoz, Google Webmaster Central, and other search engine optimization sites, the meta title tag is not the most important meta tag. The title element is important to SEO, given it has been optimized with keywords which add visibility to the end user and help in search engine rankings. While it’s important to have accurate information in meta tags, not all search engines use the information in meta tags. For a good explanation of meta tags and search engines, check out the Answering more popular picks: meta tags and web search Hope this helps. |
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96 posts
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redcrew, You’re completely wrong. SEOMOZ puts meta title at most important factor – http://www.seomoz.org/article/search-ranking-factors It’s debatable if it is the most – and if it is now, it may not be next week – but it is very important. Same as everyone else, e.g. http://www.vaughns-1-pagers.com/internet/google-ranking-factors.htm Maybe you were confused with meta keyword – most likely ignored by Google, et al. Thanks for the link, but I’ve been doing SEO for companies for 8 years. ;) |
1493 posts
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Forgive me if I bumble in where angels fear to tread … but isn’t the “title” tag referred to in the SEOmoz article the header “title”, as in Or, perhaps, I’ve misunderstood completely! :) |
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191 posts
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DavidONE, Guess there’s some confusion. Like David, when I read the article from SEOMoz, it refers to keywords in the title tag, not the “meta title” tag as the most important factor. DavidONE, from the SEOMoz page you linked:
I’m not confused about the meta keyword; I know that it is ignored by most search engines due to past abuse by web professionals. For search engine optimization, I refer to the Web Developers SEO Cheat Sheet by SEOMoz for optimizing websites (last version published Sept 2008). It recommends using the title tag, not the “meta title” tag, and provides a recommended title tag syntax. |
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96 posts
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David, :) Yes, that’s what I’m referring to – <TITLE> tag. Keywords in there have a high weighting for SEO. They also are usually used as the URL text in search results – so you want them to be attractive to people as well as spiders. <title>Home</title> isn’t very enticing for either. ;) . redcrew, Sorry for being blunt – a few beers and rushing out the door last night as I replied. I think we’ve been disagreeing whilst agreeing. :) Where I’ve said ‘meta title’, I’m referring to ‘<title> tag’ – which is possibly confusing because there is a ‘<meta title=”…”’ but it’s redundant. http://www.seoconsultants.com/meta-tags/ + http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/struct/global.html#h-7.4.2 + http://www.webmarketingnow.com/tips/meta-title.html So, back to Frog. The fact that I cannot set <title> independetly of page title within admin and indpendently of main navigation links (Home, About Us, Contact Us, etc.) is a real weakness IMO and needs to be addressed ASAP. In the mean time, I’m going to have to hack my install (probably using meta keywords) to provide this – and be prepared for extra work when it comes time to upgrade. :( |
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96 posts
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http://code.google.com/p/madebyfrogs/issues/detail?id=121 |
184 posts
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Just throwing my view in … The title tag is not important as it once was, true. However, good SEO is about a good semantic relationship between alot of page elements, which is why it still plays it’s part in the puzzle. Now, as for a page heading being different to the title tag, I disagree. Being that search engines do use the title tag as the link text, they will only use the page heading if there is no appropriate meta description, so it doesn’t matter for SEO if they are the same. For screen readers and everyone else the title tag merely acts like a snapshot (chapter marker in a book if you will) that should therefore reflect the chapter heading without interpretation. As such, there is no value in making them different … being that the web is built around real-world metaphors, I don’t see this changing unless this becomes otherwise (which won’t be for some time). However, the web does tend to break real-world tradition and such, you often see the title formatted in various ways such as pre-pending the site/company name to the page heading … this does not happen much in print , but it does and therefore I think it does need to be addressed because of this factor alone. |
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486 posts
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Like DavidONE, I would appreciate a title field. I’m doing it with Page Parts now, but it would make things a little cleaner. I do normally set the title element text to something different (generally using more keywords) than what shows up as the h1 title. The h1 title needs to be very readable, while the title element needs to be more findable by search engines. That’s the reason I almost always use different text for each thing. For example I might use an acronym in the h1 title—often because of a need to keep headlines short, but in the title element I will put the acronym plus the full term in parentheses. If other people see the need, one way to handle it would be to simply add another field to the “Metadata” tab, though strictly speaking it is not metadata, but the title element. That field in turn can be autocompleted based on what is put into the Page Title field, and can be overridden by user input. In other words, much the same way that slugs and breadcrumbs are now handled. |
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191 posts
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ricks, I like your suggestion of having another field in the Metadata tag, that would be autofilled by the Page Title text, but could be overwritten by the end user. |
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96 posts
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ricks, Yup – that would be perfect. P.S. Just to check (as I’m still finding my feet with Frog) – do you have to manually create a page part for each new page to hold your <title> tag? It’s not automatic, is it? |
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486 posts
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Page Parts inherit from siblings, so it’s not necessary to create it manually if you are creating a sibling page of a page where the Part already exists. Give it a try. You’ll see what I mean. |
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96 posts
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ricks, That’s not quite happening for me. I created a ‘banner’ page part (or ‘tab’ as it’s called on the green ‘+’ tooltip) for home. When I create sub-pages, the ‘banner’ tab / page part is created but the contents are not inherited. The page part is empty. Is that correct behaviour? Is that what you see? Thanks. |
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486 posts
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Yes, that’s correct behavior. Page Parts do not inherit contents. If you want to do that, then you are probably better off creating a Page Part with those contents in the parent and then doing $this->parent->content() in the children pages/layouts. |
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96 posts
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OK, understand. Thanks for your help. :) |
51 posts
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+1 for the meta title field. Actually I do the job with page part, but part is not really designed for that’s… |
44 posts
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Hello Dear, |
5 posts
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Best and easiest way is to use the title for the title element and have a separate page for the other element. Though it is not as important as before. A good SEO is looking into relationships between pages like in a puzzle and sees what elements are in conjunction with another. Page parts do not inherit contents so you are probably better of creating new ones with contents that you need. |