Support » Plugin: All in One SEO – Best WordPress SEO Plugin – Easily Improve SEO Rankings & Increase Traffic » Google editing my page titles or problem w/plugin setting?

  • I’ve noticed that Google is showing a snippet of the site name in the first spot in the page title – ahead of the title as is set in the plugins, for many of our sties in this fashion:

    Sample url: http://www.sleep-rite.com

    Page Title (as displayed by Google) for a typical non-branded search “sleep centers in New Orleans, LA”

    “Sleep-Rite: Sleep Centers & CPAP Machines in New Orleans, LA”

    However, the title in the source code, and generated by the plugin is as follows:

    <title>Sleep Centers & CPAP Machines New Orleans, LA – Sleep Rite</title>

    The site name is nowhere to be found, yet Google is showing it ahead of my optimized title and with a : and space ahead of it. Yuck.

    When we search in Yahoo we see the page title reflected as programmed.

    I know that Google has the ability to craft it’s own page title based on other factors, but I’m seeing this same type of result for most of our sites and find it odd that it’s so consistent:

    “Sitename: Page Title”

    I would love to hear if anyone has feedback on this, or if there is a setting in All in One SEO that might perhaps cause this. We have the settings marked to only display %page_title% and NOT sitename at all.

    Thanks in advance,
    Andre’

    http://wordpress.org/plugins/all-in-one-seo-pack/

Viewing 8 replies - 1 through 8 (of 8 total)
  • Plugin Support Steve M

    (@wpsmort)

    Hi Andre,

    I checked and it looks like Google hasn’t indexed your homepage since April 30th, 2013 so I’d recommend resubmitting the site to Google using Google Webmaster Tools and then waiting a few weeks and see if they reindex your homepage and display the title correctly.

    Sleep Rite: Sleep Centers & CPAP Machines New Orleans, LA
    http://www.sleep-rite.com/‎
    Apr 30, 2013 – Sleep Rite has 6 convenient sleep centers located across metro New Orleans. Contact us today for CPAP or to schedule a sleep study.

    Thread Starter andresavoie

    (@andresavoie)

    Thanks for the reply. They haven’t really added new content to the site since we launched it, nor have the SEO settings been changed or updated. As I mentioned this seems to be an issue with other sites as well so that’s why i was hoping for a response on whether or not this might be a setup issue of some sort.

    Plugin Support Steve M

    (@wpsmort)

    Hi Andre,

    As long as All in One SEO Pack is outputting the Title tag correctly to the source code of each page and post then that’s as far as I can help you. Whether Google wants to display what you’ve provided in their SERPS is up to them and not something you can force. All you can do is provide a Title tag for each page and post and submit the site to them to index, what they do after that is totally up to them.

    Thread Starter andresavoie

    (@andresavoie)

    Thanks for the reply.

    The thing that is bugging me about this is that our WordPress sites are the ONLY ones we’re seeing this in Google search results. Our other sites that are built on different CMS technology don’t show this type of change in the search results and I’m wondering if it’s WordPress specific?

    Plugin Support Steve M

    (@wpsmort)

    Hi Andre,

    I cannot answer that. We’re only seeing this as an issue for a small handful of sites, it’s not happening for every WordPress site we’ve looked at.

    Thread Starter andresavoie

    (@andresavoie)

    I really appreciate the quick responses and feedback.

    We do all of our sites in a very systematized fashion and a spot check reveals this is happening on every one we’ve checked.

    I’m going to try and experiment…I’ve removed the ‘Site name” from the general settings and see if this changes the issue. I’ll keep you posted.

    Thread Starter andresavoie

    (@andresavoie)

    Well just a quick update, I think my experiment worked. We removed the sitename from the General Settings, leaving it blank. Then we created a fresh sitemap and submitted to Google via Webmaster Tools and today the same search result shows our site without the company name in front of the SEO title.

    I realize anything like this is anecdotal but I’m convinced it’s not a coincidence.

    Plugin Support Steve M

    (@wpsmort)

    Hi Andre,

    Interesting. That does make sense though that Google would pick up the site title and display it as part of the title in SERPs. I must admit though that I haven’t seen this happening with any of our sites or sites we’ve worked on recently but it could be something Google is testing.

Viewing 8 replies - 1 through 8 (of 8 total)
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