Is it still good practice to put your title in the summary?

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   Thomas Swanposted 10 years ago

   Following my investigation into good SEO practice, I decided to write the title of my hubs as the first words in the hub summaries. So the summary would start with the title, followed by a hyphen (dash) and a brief description. I do this on almost all of my hubs, but I don't like doing it because it seems pointless to reproduce the title there.
   
   So my question is, does google still like it if you do this? There have been a lot of changes to google recently, and many of those have been aimed at rendering SEO useless. I wouldn't want to be harming my traffic by doing something that I never wanted to do in the first place. If there's any SEO experts here with recent information on the matter, please help!

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      Will Apseposted 10 years agoin reply to this

      You don't get much space in the summary, why repeat the title? Get your main keywords (or synonyms perhaps) in there, then a bit of a teaser.

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         wildernessposted 10 years agoin reply to this

         Agreed.  Get the keywords in, along with a hook to snag the reader.

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         Pamela N Redposted 10 years agoin reply to this

         My thoughts exactly, It's redundant. You've already got it in the search address use that space for more keywords that aren't in your title.

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         Thomas Swanposted 10 years agoin reply to this

         The idea is that your main keywords are already in the title, so you'll want to repeat them in the summary for maximum effect. I don't know why it's good practice to do that, just that it supposedly is. But yea, I'd rather do it your way.

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            The Examiner-1posted 10 years agoin reply to this

            Browsers - especially Google - do not like the same keywords being repeated too often.

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            Marisa Wrightposted 10 years agoin reply to this

            Repeating your main keywords is completely different from repeating your whole title.  Obviously it's a good thing to have keywords in your summary.

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               The Examiner-1posted 10 years agoin reply to this

               Yes, it is good to have keywords, but having the same one(s) repeated too often is not good. It is better to use a variety of keywords, just not too many.

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      AMAZING THINKERposted 10 years agoin reply to this

      It doesn't matter!!
      There are only 2 things you should optimize for Google.
      1. Title
      2. Links
      
      It's enough to use your keyword once in the title. You repeat it twice, thrice...it still has the same value.
      Let's say you are optimizing your hub: top 10 best football players of all time. You want to also target the people who are looking for the top soccer players.
      The best way to write it, is: Top Football Players of all time | Best Soccer Players.
      Note that I used both Top and Best in a natural way. 
      But say for some reason I can't use both of them. In that case, I will have to get links with the anchor text using that word.
      Summaries are for people not for search engines. So write a summery that will attract more clicks.
      
      Using the title in your summery will not harm your rankings, but it won't benefit you either.

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         lovebuglenaposted 10 years agoin reply to this

         I thought hub summary was the meta description that is used for search engine crawlers (not sure saying that correctly)...

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            AMAZING THINKERposted 10 years agoin reply to this

            Not at all!
            They did it in the past, and obviously spammers and black hat SEOs used that to get to the top, so they don't anymore.

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            Writer Foxposted 10 years agoin reply to this

            On HubPages, what you fill in as a 'Summary' is coded as the 'Description Tag.'  Go to any of your Hubs and right click to 'View Source.'  Hit 'Ctrl F' and find the word 'description.'  You'll see the summary you wrote coded as the 'Description Meta Tag.'

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               AMAZING THINKERposted 10 years agoin reply to this

               Why do you have to do that? It appears in the search results; it's obviously the meta description tag. She is asking if Google's crawlers use that to determine the content, which is a No!

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                  Writer Foxposted 10 years agoin reply to this

                  You made a comment in this post that the 'Summary' was not the 'Meta Description Tag' and that is not true:
                  
                  http://hubpages.com/forum/topic/118843#post2512366
                  
                  In this Forum post you made, I have no idea what you mean by "Why do you have to do that?" Google does indeed use the Description Tag as one part of its algorithm which determines information on a webpage and which search queries the page will answer.  (It's not the only factor used to determine content on a page, but it is a significant factor.) It doesn't always use the Description Tag as the Snippet in search results; Google might take some other portion of a webpage to use as the Snippet to match it to a particular search query. That's why Google highlights words in the Snippet which are relevant to the search query – this shows the searcher how the webpage answers his query.

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                     AMAZING THINKERposted 10 years agoin reply to this

                     Yeah but that in no way affects the search rank!
                     Google highlights them for the searcher to see.

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                        Thomas Swanposted 10 years agoin reply to this

                        Thanks for the advice and discussion Amazing Thinker and Writer Fox. I see there's some disagreement about whether it affects search rank. At the very least, those words being emboldened/highlighted in the snippet will help, but if there's no ranking benefit, maybe it's not worth it.
                        
                        The `top 10 best football players' hub has surpassed all my expectations with the title it has. That was my first `big traffic' hub, so I'm very happy with it... even though I wish my more intellectually stimulating hubs would do better I'll remember your advice though, and consider it in future.

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                           Writer Foxposted 10 years agoin reply to this

                           Congratulations on the mega-success of your Hub:
                           http://hubpages.com/hub/Top-10-Best-Foo … f-All-Time

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      lovebuglenaposted 10 years agoin reply to this

      You don't need to include the whole title in the summary but sometimes it may be a good idea, especially if the hub is a how-to do something hub.

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         Thomas Swanposted 10 years agoin reply to this

         Thanks for the advice. Yes, in some of my hubs I've put a partial title in the summary; especially if the title is quite long.

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      Marisa Wrightposted 10 years agoin reply to this

      I don't know where that comes from, but it sounds like pretty dumb advice to me.
      
      The idea of the summary is that it may be used as the description which appears under the Hub title in Google results. That's the "teaser" which is going to tempt the reader to click on your Hub instead of the result above or below it.  If your summary is just your title repeated, it's going to look spammy and make the reader less likely to click.

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         Thomas Swanposted 10 years agoin reply to this

         Yea, that does worry me a bit. It might be worth changing them all just to avoid the spammy look. Something to think about for sure.

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      Writer Foxposted 10 years agoin reply to this

      Google normally shows 157 words (including spaces) for your Description Tag.  It won't always use the tag you specify, depending upon the search query. But, for SEO, Google takes your Description Tag seriously as your statement about the content of your webpage (Hub) and will use it as one of the SEO signals to determine which search queries your Hub might answer.
      
      HubPages puts the date you published or last edited your Hub as the beginning of the Description Tag.  In the example below, I lost 22 characters (including spaces) from my 157 allotment for the tag because of the date insertion. So, keep that in mind. You can see the full Description Tag on your Profile page, but that's not what searchers will see. To the searcher, your Description Tag is a sales pitch that either encourages him to click through to your Hub or sends him to the next listing on his search results.
      
      You can duplicate the Title Tag in your Description, but it depends upon how you go about it. In the example below, I duplicated my Title, but I did it as part of a complete sentence i.e., I'm actually talking to the searcher telling him what he can do on my Hub ('What's in it for him') and using a present tense verb and no adjectives ('free' is a keyword and doesn't count as a normal adjective for tags).
      
      The Description Tag also has to overcome the Topic Category HubPages has as the URL for your Hub.  In my example below, people will notice that my Hub is about 'Gender and Relationships' instead of 'gender-and-relationships/marriage/marriage-anniversaries.' Put something in your Description to counteract the bad message that may be sent about your Hub.  I used the word 'spouses' to clarify because my Hub is not about boyfriend/girlfriend anniversaries or a relationship with a mistress or anything else that 'Gender and Relationships' might suggest.
      
      (By the way, if a searcher actually clicks on that link instead of the Title, he is taken to your Profile where all of your Hubs under that Topic are listed which is really bad.  Not only is the searcher taken to a different page (not your Hub at all), but he might see something else you wrote under that Topic which is vastly removed from what he was searching for and might even be offensive to him.  If you have many Hubs under a Topic (some people have hundreds), the searcher will probably just click away because he can't find what he is looking for.) 
      
      This is what works for me.
      
      

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         Will Apseposted 10 years agoin reply to this

         'Google normally shows 157 words (including spaces) for your Description Tag.'
         
         'Characters' not 'words'.

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            Writer Foxposted 10 years agoin reply to this

            Thanks for correcting that - it was after a long day.  It's characters and spaces.

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               Thomas Swanposted 10 years agoin reply to this

               Thanks for the wealth of good advice in your comments Writer Fox. Lots to think about. I think I'll try your technique and be a bit more subtle and creative about how I use keywords in the summary.

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   The Examiner-1posted 10 years ago

   I do not see the use in repeating the title. The summary is a very short version of what your Hub is about to attract readers. Repeating the title in there is just using up the space for your summary.

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      Thomas Swanposted 10 years agoin reply to this

      Thanks for the advice examiner. You are probably right.

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   LeanManposted 10 years ago

   SEO advice out there is at times contradictory and often outdated, especially with the amount that google has changed over the last couple of years.
   
   It used to be that your keywords should be in your title and the description (the HP summary). So if the keywords are the title of your hub you would repeat them in your summary to gain maximum benefit from your SEO..
   
   HOWEVER, i have no idea if that still holds true. You could go look at several high ranking hubs for various searches and see how many have the keywords that they rank highly for within their title and in the summary if you want confirmation if it has an effect. Although with google claiming 200+ things to affect your ranking it would be hard to know for sure if it were the inclusion of your keywords in the summary or some other factor that was helping.
   
   Personally I tend to include the keywords but I write them into the summary in a "normal" way, not keywords followed by the summary.. Your summary may act as your description so it had best also act as a hook to gain the interest of the searcher and encourage them to take the bait and go read..

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