• Resolved dav74

    (@dav74)


    Hi there,

    For some time I have been worried about the fact we have many page titles which do not exactly match our SEO titles. We receive this warning in ahrefs: “Page and SERP titles do not match”.

    I have a feeling this might be negatively affecting our sites SEO, especially after the last Google update in September 22. I have about 250 URLs with this issue, mainly product URLs. Our titles were sometimes too long so we shortened the SEO versions.

    Do you think we should really bite the bullet and rewrite 250 product titles and implement 301 redirects to the new product pages? Interested to hear your thoughts.

    Thanks

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  • Plugin Author Sybre Waaijer

    (@cybr)

    Hello!

    I think this is noise from Ahrefs’s tool. This is what Google says on the matter:
    https://developers.google.com/search/docs/appearance/title-link#how-title-links-in-google-search-are-created.

    Google’s generation of title links on the Google Search results page is completely automated and takes into account both the content of a page and references to it that appear on the web. The goal of the title link is to best represent and describe each result.

    Google Search uses the following sources to automatically determine title links:

    – Content in <title> elements
    – Main visual title shown on the page
    – Heading elements, such as <h1> elements
    – Other content that’s large and prominent through the use of style treatments
    – Other text contained in the page
    – Anchor text on the page
    – Text within links that point to the page

    Here’s what Google Search Central has to say about this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4FkSZIW6d48#t=980.

    Titles are important! They are important for SEO. They are used as a ranking factor. Of course, they are definitely used as a ranking factor, but it is not something where I’d say the time you spend on tweaking the title is really the best use of your time.

    Here’s what the SEOs at Search Engine Journal have to say on the matter:
    https://www.searchenginejournal.com/google-is-rewriting-title-tags-in-serps/416793/.

    The apparent goal of replacing titles is to enhance the relevancy for searchers. If that’s the case, a more relevant title could be more compelling to click on. […]

    For what it’s worth, I haven’t seen any reports of pages with rewritten titles dropping in rankings.

    I think you should do nothing immediately and rashly based on Ahrefs’s findings, but rely on the first-party data from Google Search Console’s Performance report before taking action.

    Thread Starter dav74

    (@dav74)

    OK interesting. Many thanks for that. Yes sometimes hard to tell what exactly is the correct thing to do 🙂 We will hold off rewriting product page descriptions for now!

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