SEO Success: Fix Those Duplicate Titles
December 21, 2012
Every year I work on improving my website during the quiet of the holidays. This is the perfect time to catch up and ramp up for the new year.
My suggestions for improving SEO (Search Engine Optimization) for your website are always free basic fix-its that everyone can do to improve the chance that your website will be found by customers, collectors, or curators.
No baloney. No manipulation of search results with tricks.
Today's post is about duplicate title tags.
- A title tag is the title of the page.
- Each page needs a different title.
The important issue is that the title is unique for every page. Even if you are using WordPress, or a template for your website, every page has a title.
Just like you would not post two identical images, you don't want to duplicate title tags for different pages. I wrote about this before on ASK Harriete.
Duplicate page titles are NOT good for 3 reasons:
- Search engines think every page is the same.
- Google now penalizes websites with duplicate content.
- Duplicate titles will hurt SEO for your website.
Below is an example of duplicate titles on my website, and how I found the mistake. The correction was easy, finding the duplicate titles was hard until I found this great tool on Google Search Console (previously Google Webmaster Tools).
It turns out that I had three pages (show below) on my website all with the SAME title: "In My Studio - tools used to construct my work."
A recent newsletter from Jill Whalen (my SEO guru) told me how to find duplicate page titles using Google Search Console (previously Google Webmaster Tools).
If you aren't already registered with Google Search Console this is a free service and your first step.
This is really important. The tools of Google Webmasters are all free diagnostic tools for improving your website or blog. I am going to spend the next week learning how to use these tools with the readers of ASK Harriete.
To get started, read the previous post. Learn how to add your site to Google Search Console (previously Google Webmaster Tools) and verify your site.
Next read this article: SEO and Duplicate Content Issues that Hurt Google Traffic
More information about writing titles can be found in Titles RULE - Title EVERY ONE of Your Website Pages Differently
This post was updated on July 2, 2022, to provide current links.