Changing page titles and metas how this would impact on search engine rankings?

Hi everyone!

I was wondering whether changing on a regular basis (every two or three days) the title of the pages and the metas would have an impact on the search engine rankings. My impression is that a bit of finetuning is required, however, if we keep changing the title of the pages that, in the long run, could be penalised by the search engines. I believe I read it somewhere... I would appreciate any help!

Thanks

Krilin

 

I would never change my title that often. To the degree that on-page stuff has any influence on your place in the SERPs the title is probably the single most important item.

Three days isn't long enough for Google to find it and apply any value or importance to it. Your title should always include the search terms that you are using in your backlinks for anchor text. If you changed it all the time you would probably lose this relationship.

I don't think jerking a site around like that is finetuning.

On the issue of meta tags it is general agreed that Google doesn't use them in SERP placement considerations at all. Other search engine do use them and I've seen it reported that Yahoo does. But again I don't think you have a thing to gain by jerking them around like you propose.

If you want to finetune, make small changes and give then at least a month to work their way through the system. Then evaluate and make another adjustment if it seem appropriate.

And as far "penalize" goes that a load of crap. Google isn't in the business of "penalizing" web sites except in the most outrageous examples of spamming. Google is in the business of finding the most relevant web sites to present to their searchers or users.

If somebody wants to waste their time changing their title and meta tags every three days Google could care less.

 

I have to suspect that you have misunderstood a truth. The truth, widely accepted, is that Google (at least) likes change on web pages. But it's the kind of change they like that is important to understand.

They want to see "change" that suggests that the page is frequently--the more frequently, the better, within reasonable limits--updated in a way that suggests that it is conveying fresh information. The idea is not "novelty per se", but the suggestion that your page or pages is or are as topical and up-to-date as possible.

What, by popular report, Google looks for is changed page size (in bytes), page date/time stamp, and actual on-page content. It has been reported that they do not seem to be terribly demanding about that last, given the other two: some have reported apparent success with just randomly running a few blank spaces in and out.

What makes sense, both for Google and for your visitors, is to have some sort of page content that changes--preferably with little or no input from you--frequently, and is relevant to your site, or at least not obviously irrelevant.

<plug>

Some examples can be found on the site in my sig below. One is a weather drop-in that you can set up for pretty much any spot in the world to get local conditions, in a dropin size from tiny to modest (more info as the size goes up); in the USA and Canada, you can also get 5-day extended forecasts. Another is a converter for international currency rates, updated daily, for which you can select the "base" currency and whichever others you want conversion rates for, from the several dozen the IMF deals with.

You plug something like that into a web page--or, especially via shtml, all your web pages--and there is content that changes for you.

</plug>

Some people are turning to RSS feeds as another source of topical, changing data. But, in general, the more of your web pages that change in meaningful content, the more often, the more it seems the bots like you.

But that does not mean you should change things essential to the identity of your page, and especially the title and higher-level <hN> headers. Those should be crafted carefully once, and thereafter left alone.

 

That's what I thought! Many thanks for your help!


Krilin

 

I agree too, just fine-tune the title to target maybe long-tail keywords too, but don't change it too often. Fresh content is another thing and in my opinion is important for serps.

 

Changing title is better, Meta is wate except meta description which shown with title in SERP. But both will not be in content category...

 

I don't really get why you'd want to change the title. Seems like more work. If you want to test a keyword, you can always create a copy page linking to your site. I wouldn't be too keen on changing title and meta tags.

 

Be careful about the amount of content you change on your site. There are basically two types of pages in Google's eyes; stagnant and fluid. Stagnant would be pages that go for very long periods without change and may not be cached very often. A stagnant page can still perform well in the index and for the sake of this discussion "stagnant" only eludes to the frequency of the page's updates. Fluid pages are pages like newspapers which may be cached a several times a day.
I had a stagnant site that I changed a lot of text on and it completely disappeared from the index. Now, when I say changed, the focus and keywords were still the same, but the content was fresh. The site was still cached, still had PR but was slammed by a -950. The site still hasn't come back.
Moral of the story, if you have a site that hasn't changed for a long time, be careful with how much of the text you change. I'd tweak main pages very little and add additional pages that the search engines can find which are focused on the other topics you want to emphasize.

 

Yeah, changing meta tags probably isn't the best thing to do if you already rank well. But could probably help if you're nowhere to be found.

 

well change the internal pages of your website and create some backlink...tht..will be the best rather than changing the whole ...

 

My approach is simple. I do ongoing keyword research, and if I find a page title that I can improve, I change it. Otherwise, I leave it alone. The decision is based on one thing only: can I improve the title by tweaking the keywords.

 

Any change in the Title tag or the meta tags, good or bad, affects your position on SERPs temporarily. Before taking such a decision, analyse the pros and cons of doing them. If the temporary drop in traffic won't hurt you much then you can make some changes in the above tags (for good).
However, you can do that with changing times and not very often. Research on the keywords and forecast for the next 8-12 months and go further from there.