Something I Just Discovered about titles and URLS
98- yoshi97
- 1307 posts
- Joined: 6 months ago
- Hubs: 60
- Fans: 283
For a long time it has puzzled me how one of my hubs keeps doing great, when it shouldn't. You see, I started a hub on one topic and then changed my mind in the middle of it.
Now, back then I had no idea you couldn't change the URL later, so I was horrified when I was stuck with a URL that couldn't be changed and had nothing to do with my article ... but I left it as is, vowing I would some day find out how to fix it ... lucky for me ... that day never came.
The hub I speak of went on to be a great performer, but it broke the rule where the URL must have the keyword in it. Trust me ... it does not ... but the title does.
So, what does this have to do with today? Read on!
I was checking my hubs and I found on some when I did an exact search I received a description and on others I received all of my tags. Now, no one is going to click on a bunch of tags ... and sure enough ... the ones that came up as tags were my worst performers.
What caused some descriptions to show up right and others to show up wrong. Was Hubpages short circuiting my efforts? Was the Google Beast exacting revenge on me? As it turns out, the case was neither ... and what I just learned was worth a lot of gold ... which is why I will share.
You see, I was always told the URL had more weight than the title, and I believed it. I can now say 100% that that is a myth!
To prove my case, I looked up every hub of mine by keywords. Now, for some I had the keywords in the title and for every one of those the description appeared fine. For those that only had the keywords in the URL the URL was nothing but tags.
So what does that prove? Read on!
Now, for those hubs that had the keywords in the title AND in the URL, I had a description. What does this mean? Tada! The title has more weight! That's why my article for the wrong URL was still doing well, because I used the keywords in the title - it also explains why some articles were doing poorly, as I did not use the keywords in the title.
Of course, it's best to use your keywords in your title AND in your URL, and I now know this to be true ... I just changed the title on some to make them more interesting, and in doing so, shot myself in the foot.
So, now you know the secret ... always place your keywords in your title AND your URL - and if you have a URL that is wrong and can't be changed, at least place the keywords in your title.
enjoy!
86- B.C. BOUTIQUE
- 1168 posts
- Joined: 2 months ago
- Hubs: 6
- Fans: 41
ty yoshi, very informative, I had no idea, it is true, you learn something new every day...
96- Len Cannon
- 275 posts
- Joined: 15 months ago
- Hubs: 43
- Fans: 143
Well, yes, that is good advice in general. You should always have the keywords you want in your title.
95- Ultimate Hubber
- 799 posts
- Joined: 5 months ago
- Hubs: 71
- Fans: 233
yoshi97 wrote:
So, now you know the secret ... always place your keywords in your title AND your URL - and if you have a URL that is wrong and can't be changed, at least place the keywords in your title.
enjoy!SEOs have been emphasizing this point for years now. Good for you that you have realized it.
You should have it in both the title and URL, but having the keyword in the URL is a very heavy bonus compared to title in my experience!
88- Jenn Knows
- 15 posts
- Joined: 2 years ago
- Hubs: 15
- Fans: 390
Thanks for sharing your experience.
My experience shows me the title is more important than anything. It is always a huge plus if you use the main keywords in the URL. But be very careful about keeping your url's short. You might have 6-7 words in your title, try to trim the URL into 2-4 words with the main keywords. It really helps.
69- kverdasmith
- 25 posts
- Joined: 4 weeks ago
- Hubs: 3
- Fans: 2
yoshi97 wrote:
For a long time it has puzzled me how one of my hubs keeps doing great, when it shouldn't. You see, I started a hub on one topic and then changed my mind in the middle of it.
Now, back then I had no idea you couldn't change the URL later, so I was horrified when I was stuck with a URL that couldn't be changed and had nothing to do with my article ... but I left it as is, vowing I would some day find out how to fix it ... lucky for me ... that day never came.
The hub I speak of went on to be a great performer, but it broke the rule where the URL must have the keyword in it. Trust me ... it does not ... but the title does.
So, what does this have to do with today? Read on!
I was checking my hubs and I found on some when I did an exact search I received a description and on others I received all of my tags. Now, no one is going to click on a bunch of tags ... and sure enough ... the ones that came up as tags were my worst performers.
What caused some descriptions to show up right and others to show up wrong. Was Hubpages short circuiting my efforts? Was the Google Beast exacting revenge on me? As it turns out, the case was neither ... and what I just learned was worth a lot of gold ... which is why I will share.
You see, I was always told the URL had more weight than the title, and I believed it. I can now say 100% that that is a myth!
To prove my case, I looked up every hub of mine by keywords. Now, for some I had the keywords in the title and for every one of those the description appeared fine. For those that only had the keywords in the URL the URL was nothing but tags.
So what does that prove? Read on!
Now, for those hubs that had the keywords in the title AND in the URL, I had a description. What does this mean? Tada! The title has more weight! That's why my article for the wrong URL was still doing well, because I used the keywords in the title - it also explains why some articles were doing poorly, as I did not use the keywords in the title.
Of course, it's best to use your keywords in your title AND in your URL, and I now know this to be true ... I just changed the title on some to make them more interesting, and in doing so, shot myself in the foot.
So, now you know the secret ... always place your keywords in your title AND your URL - and if you have a URL that is wrong and can't be changed, at least place the keywords in your title.
enjoy!Thanks, that was nice of you to share. I feel like I am going to Hub College. It is great.
Ahhh...more wisdom from our wise dragon!
94- sunforged
- 1594 posts
- Joined: 13 months ago
- Hubs: 53
- Fans: 342
Should be in both, but the URL is weighed more heavily than the title.
Particularly when taking in account ALL of the search engines, yahoo loves keyword rich urls
I have close to a hundred domains that if i was willing to share, I could use as evidence...glad to see your traffic rise, but there is no doubt that the URL keyword takes precedence over a title keyword
97- rebekahELLE
- 1462 posts
- Joined: 3 months ago
- Hubs: 15
- Fans: 162
sunforged wrote:
Should be in both, but the URL is weighed more heavily than the title.
Particularly when taking in account ALL of the search engines, yahoo loves keyword rich urls
I have close to a hundred domains that if i was willing to share, I could use as evidence...glad to see your traffic rise, but there is no doubt that the URL keyword takes precedence over a title keywordsf, do you change all of your URL's from your title?? can you give me an example, please??
- 94
- sunforged
- 1594 posts
- Joined: 13 months ago
- Hubs: 53
- Fans: 342
No, I use cheesy keyword rich titles and URL's
So there is little to no difference between my titles and my URL's
It leads to higher rankings in the SE, Yoshi was right when he wanted to change his titles to be more "clickable" ...but its better to rank and hope your summary draws the search traffic
What i was referencing in a general not hubs specific example is that I buy domains frequently, if a keyword performs moderately well as a hubpage, than i just go ahead and buy the domain.
I cant develop so many domains, so i make quick landing pages, all ads , with one or two crappy articles...they sit like that until I find time to make a real site
Within 60 days those sites are usually first page in yahoo and google..the point? they dont have any title text!
there is a distinction...
3w.hubpages.com/hubs/makemoneyonline
3w.makemoneyonline.com/hubpages/hubs
the search engines like the keywords before the / /
the farther away they are, the less important they are
So, I would GUESS that here on hubpages the title is very important ...but in general SEO, its common knowledge that the URL keyword is key and king
So yoshis post is helpful!!!!! make sure those keywords are in the title and in the H2 (text capsule header)...its important
Im just disagreeing that the title takes precedence over the URL
...should be in both! might be that the title weighs a bit heavier here than normal since our keywords are so deep in the URL..but still doesnt outweigh the URL ..in my experience
about 3 months ago, i used the keyword tool to change all my titles and my major headers... i also stuffed a few terms around until I liked what ads appeared in my hubs
..my hub traffic went up 200% in a couple of weeks,and my earnings went up 500%...this didnt happen because my new titles were weighed heavier than my URL, it happened because i did better research.
Now all my new hubs have better researched titles and URL's from teh beginning...but if a hub is failing, its better to change the title keywords than worry about a a title/url agreement
does that make any sense? Ive been at the computer a little to long today
- 98
- yoshi97
- 1307 posts
- Joined: 6 months ago
- Hubs: 60
- Fans: 283
sunforged wrote:
No, I use cheesy keyword rich titles and URL's
So there is little to no difference between my titles and my URL's
It leads to higher rankings in the SE, Yoshi was right when he wanted to change his titles to be more "clickable" ...but its better to rank and hope your summary draws the search traffic
What i was referencing in a general not hubs specific example is that I buy domains frequently, if a keyword performs moderately well as a hubpage, than i just go ahead and buy the domain.
I cant develop so many domains, so i make quick landing pages, all ads , with one or two crappy articles...they sit like that until I find time to make a real site
Within 60 days those sites are usually first page in yahoo and google..the point? they dont have any title text!
there is a distinction...
3w.hubpages.com/hubs/makemoneyonline
3w.makemoneyonline.com/hubpages/hubs
the search engines like the keywords before the / /
the farther away they are, the less important they are
So, I would GUESS that here on hubpages the title is very important ...but in general SEO, its common knowledge that the URL keyword is key and king
So yoshis post is helpful!!!!! make sure those keywords are in the title and in the H2 (text capsule header)...its important
Im just disagreeing that the title takes precedence over the URL
...should be in both! might be that the title weighs a bit heavier here than normal since our keywords are so deep in the URL..but still doesnt outweigh the URL ..in my experience
about 3 months ago, i used the keyword tool to change all my titles and my major headers... i also stuffed a few terms around until I liked what ads appeared in my hubs
..my hub traffic went up 200% in a couple of weeks,and my earnings went up 500%...this didnt happen because my new titles were weighed heavier than my URL, it happened because i did better research.
Now all my new hubs have better researched titles and URL's from teh beginning...but if a hub is failing, its better to change the title keywords than worry about a a title/url agreement
does that make any sense? Ive been at the computer a little to long todayThanks Sunforged! That definitely helps explain the anomaly, as I was always taught the URL was most important and it always worked that way for me until I came here.
I think you hit the nail on the head when you mentioned URL length. This would explain why my titles are overruling my URLs without invalidating anything I had learned in the past.
So, on Hubpages at least, title appears to trump URL in importance; HOWEVER, still use those keywords in the URL as I definitely agree that it should help with ranking.
Currently, I'm experimenting with a few hubs by using one high ranking keyword in the URL and a different high ranking keyword in the title ... not certain what to expect yet, so I'll have to keep a watch on my analytics to see if I can find a conclusive trend in the keyword hits data.
And while I might be a wise dragon ... we need to also remember that Sunforged is a wise human. As he SEOs off this site more than I do nowadays, one would be wise to lend more credence to what he says. - 98
- yoshi97
- 1307 posts
- Joined: 6 months ago
- Hubs: 60
- Fans: 283
yoshi97 wrote:
sunforged wrote:
No, I use cheesy keyword rich titles and URL's
So there is little to no difference between my titles and my URL's
It leads to higher rankings in the SE, Yoshi was right when he wanted to change his titles to be more "clickable" ...but its better to rank and hope your summary draws the search traffic
What i was referencing in a general not hubs specific example is that I buy domains frequently, if a keyword performs moderately well as a hubpage, than i just go ahead and buy the domain.
I cant develop so many domains, so i make quick landing pages, all ads , with one or two crappy articles...they sit like that until I find time to make a real site
Within 60 days those sites are usually first page in yahoo and google..the point? they dont have any title text!
there is a distinction...
3w.hubpages.com/hubs/makemoneyonline
3w.makemoneyonline.com/hubpages/hubs
the search engines like the keywords before the / /
the farther away they are, the less important they are
So, I would GUESS that here on hubpages the title is very important ...but in general SEO, its common knowledge that the URL keyword is key and king
So yoshis post is helpful!!!!! make sure those keywords are in the title and in the H2 (text capsule header)...its important
Im just disagreeing that the title takes precedence over the URL
...should be in both! might be that the title weighs a bit heavier here than normal since our keywords are so deep in the URL..but still doesnt outweigh the URL ..in my experience
about 3 months ago, i used the keyword tool to change all my titles and my major headers... i also stuffed a few terms around until I liked what ads appeared in my hubs
..my hub traffic went up 200% in a couple of weeks,and my earnings went up 500%...this didnt happen because my new titles were weighed heavier than my URL, it happened because i did better research.
Now all my new hubs have better researched titles and URL's from teh beginning...but if a hub is failing, its better to change the title keywords than worry about a a title/url agreement
does that make any sense? Ive been at the computer a little to long todayThanks Sunforged! That definitely helps explain the anomaly, as I was always taught the URL was most important and it always worked that way for me until I came here.
I think you hit the nail on the head when you mentioned URL length. This would explain why my titles are overruling my URLs without invalidating anything I had learned in the past.
So, on Hubpages at least, title appears to trump URL in importance; HOWEVER, still use those keywords in the URL as I definitely agree that it should help with ranking.
Currently, I'm experimenting with a few hubs by using one high ranking keyword in the URL and a different high ranking keyword in the title ... not certain what to expect yet, so I'll have to keep a watch on my analytics to see if I can find a conclusive trend in the keyword hits data.
And while I might be a wise dragon ... we need to also remember that Sunforged is a wise human. As he SEOs off this site more than I do nowadays, one would be wise to lend more credence to what he says.Addendum: I went back to my older pages offsite (not on HP) where I experimented with title/URL disagreement, and those are ranking higher for the URL - and the URL for those is short. As such, I definitely think that proves Sunforged right!
90- prettydarkhorse
- 2423 posts
- Joined: 2 months ago
- Hubs: 98
- Fans: 216
yoshi97 wrote:
For a long time it has puzzled me how one of my hubs keeps doing great, when it shouldn't. You see, I started a hub on one topic and then changed my mind in the middle of it.
Now, back then I had no idea you couldn't change the URL later, so I was horrified when I was stuck with a URL that couldn't be changed and had nothing to do with my article ... but I left it as is, vowing I would some day find out how to fix it ... lucky for me ... that day never came.
The hub I speak of went on to be a great performer, but it broke the rule where the URL must have the keyword in it. Trust me ... it does not ... but the title does.
So, what does this have to do with today? Read on!
I was checking my hubs and I found on some when I did an exact search I received a description and on others I received all of my tags. Now, no one is going to click on a bunch of tags ... and sure enough ... the ones that came up as tags were my worst performers.
What caused some descriptions to show up right and others to show up wrong. Was Hubpages short circuiting my efforts? Was the Google Beast exacting revenge on me? As it turns out, the case was neither ... and what I just learned was worth a lot of gold ... which is why I will share.
You see, I was always told the URL had more weight than the title, and I believed it. I can now say 100% that that is a myth!
To prove my case, I looked up every hub of mine by keywords. Now, for some I had the keywords in the title and for every one of those the description appeared fine. For those that only had the keywords in the URL the URL was nothing but tags.
So what does that prove? Read on!
Now, for those hubs that had the keywords in the title AND in the URL, I had a description. What does this mean? Tada! The title has more weight! That's why my article for the wrong URL was still doing well, because I used the keywords in the title - it also explains why some articles were doing poorly, as I did not use the keywords in the title.
Of course, it's best to use your keywords in your title AND in your URL, and I now know this to be true ... I just changed the title on some to make them more interesting, and in doing so, shot myself in the foot.
So, now you know the secret ... always place your keywords in your title AND your URL - and if you have a URL that is wrong and can't be changed, at least place the keywords in your title.
enjoy!thanks so much YOSHI97 for this information, I always doesnt care before if they are a lot the same my URL and title now I know, hmmmm, you make my weekend good now because I have lots of articles in which the title captures the article but the URL doesnt, so at least it might still be ok...
93- lyricsingray
- 4901 posts
- Joined: 6 months ago
- Hubs: 72
- Fans: 320
Yoshi, thank you xo I was actually just having difficulty with this subject and ta da Yoshi fixed it - thank you
Thanks for the advice, one fellow hubber told me of rearranging all of his hubs that didnt have "correct" urls. If only he read this first!
- 97
- rebekahELLE
- 1462 posts
- Joined: 3 months ago
- Hubs: 15
- Fans: 162
sunforged wrote:
No, I use cheesy keyword rich titles and URL's
So there is little to no difference between my titles and my URL's
It leads to higher rankings in the SE, Yoshi was right when he wanted to change his titles to be more "clickable" ...but its better to rank and hope your summary draws the search traffic
What i was referencing in a general not hubs specific example is that I buy domains frequently, if a keyword performs moderately well as a hubpage, than i just go ahead and buy the domain.
I cant develop so many domains, so i make quick landing pages, all ads , with one or two crappy articles...they sit like that until I find time to make a real site
Within 60 days those sites are usually first page in yahoo and google..the point? they dont have any title text!
there is a distinction...
3w.hubpages.com/hubs/makemoneyonline
3w.makemoneyonline.com/hubpages/hubs
the search engines like the keywords before the / /
the farther away they are, the less important they are
So, I would GUESS that here on hubpages the title is very important ...but in general SEO, its common knowledge that the URL keyword is key and king
So yoshis post is helpful!!!!! make sure those keywords are in the title and in the H2 (text capsule header)...its important
Im just disagreeing that the title takes precedence over the URL
...should be in both! might be that the title weighs a bit heavier here than normal since our keywords are so deep in the URL..but still doesnt outweigh the URL ..in my experience
about 3 months ago, i used the keyword tool to change all my titles and my major headers... i also stuffed a few terms around until I liked what ads appeared in my hubs
..my hub traffic went up 200% in a couple of weeks,and my earnings went up 500%...this didnt happen because my new titles were weighed heavier than my URL, it happened because i did better research.
Now all my new hubs have better researched titles and URL's from teh beginning...but if a hub is failing, its better to change the title keywords than worry about a a title/url agreement
does that make any sense? Ive been at the computer a little to long todayyes, this is helpful. my keywords are in my title, but I'll have to check placement. I haven't changed any of my URL's and some of them seem to be doing fine. they're right there on page 1 at the top even when I mix up the placement of words to search where they are. a few aren't though because they're such common search words, I guess. still learning so much and I hear different things from different people, even my oldest son who spends all day on the computer and knows all this stuff.
thanks for taking the time to explain. 
94- thranax
- 2066 posts
- Joined: 2 years ago
- Hubs: 44
- Fans: 315
O.O Dang it. I always put keywords in the title and url so it doesn't really help me much.
~thranax~The most important on page factor for ranking is well known to be the title tag.
The most important off page factor for ranking (and the most important overall) is the inbound link and the anchor text in those links. (If you don't think it's important, Google "click here" and you will see the top result is Adobe Reader, even though the words "click here" aren't on the page, the title tag, or the URL, because literally millions of sites point to it with the anchor text "click here")
On hubpages, both those important ranking factors are controlled by the title, since that sets both the title tag of the page and the anchor text for every automatically generated inbound link from hubpages. With smart tagging and a popular category this can add up to thousands of links, all with the anchor text that you choose.
Bottom line, on hubpages in particular, the title tag is the single most important thing you can do on the page to help rank. The URL is a nonfactor compared to the inbound linking.- 98
- yoshi97
- 1307 posts
- Joined: 6 months ago
- Hubs: 60
- Fans: 283
johnr54 wrote:
The most important on page factor for ranking is well known to be the title tag.
The most important off page factor for ranking (and the most important overall) is the inbound link and the anchor text in those links. (If you don't think it's important, Google "click here" and you will see the top result is Adobe Reader, even though the words "click here" aren't on the page, the title tag, or the URL, because literally millions of sites point to it with the anchor text "click here")
On hubpages, both those important ranking factors are controlled by the title, since that sets both the title tag of the page and the anchor text for every automatically generated inbound link from hubpages. With smart tagging and a popular category this can add up to thousands of links, all with the anchor text that you choose.
Bottom line, on hubpages in particular, the title tag is the single most important thing you can do on the page to help rank. The URL is a nonfactor compared to the inbound linking.ah ... you speak of the Hubpages interlocking web that links articles together over time. I have watched this spindly beast and I do believe it's responsible from upping the ranking of articles over time.
I already have a PR3 article in my short time here, and I have several more headed that way. I thoroughly believe Hubpages interlocking between hubs helps a lot with the organic page rankings and that this (like you said) furthers the importance of page titles on Hubpages.
I also played around with tags during my time here, but as far as I can tell they have had no effect, other than to allow other hubbers to find my pages. To that end, I try to come up with tags that are extremely relevant to the material I wrote about - and I think they may also help with getting the right ads on the page from adsense, but the jury is still out on that one.
The difficulty of applying common SEO rules to Hupbages is that most SEO knowledge infers that *you* own the domain and are directly in control of it. With Hubpages this is not the case, which is why some of the variables are out of your control. As such, we find ourselves scrambling to find the things that are still within our grasp and working them to meet our goal.
A good example is the adsense ads themselves ... How many of us have went to the Adsense page and tried to switch the types of ads we have on our Hubpages?
I remember changing the color, the type, and everything and then waiting a day to see the new and improved ads ... they never came. Instead, I have learned to write my articles a certain way to write around the limitations of the ad placement, so as to use their placement to the best of my ability. And with over half of my hubs generating over a 6% click-thru rate I seem to have that part just about down - with the other half of the hubs being hubs for the hubbers, fluff articles for the fun of it, or the few that never received an audience (due to poor title choice, I have found).
