Re: blog post title length and url structure

[Ezpro9]

This post is deleted!

[Andy.Drinkwater]

None of it is the end of the world, but I would change the title lengths to be closer to 60 characters. I would also look at how old the posts are because it might be that Google won't rank them now because of their age and content.

Just make sure they aren't spammy but descriptive. You can change the blog URL if you wish, but this won't do much for bringing back old posts. It is good for a functional structure though.

Each of mine has the category, post title and then date and pretty much they get 1st page every time.

Andy

[Ezpro9]

thanks for blazing fast reply

do you mean we should go back and change post title length or just do it from here on out?

how can i tell if his posts or his blog is noindex?

i know di#k about code - i am just not seeing any of his posts ranking anywhere in top 5 pages

thanks again

[Andy.Drinkwater]

Unless there is some amazingly good content that is unique and will still be useful now, then I would just start this from here on in. A long title shouldn't stop Google from indexing a page if it is amazing content, unless the title is very spammy. It's all about saying just enough without going over the top. And just because you have 60 characters to play with, that doesn't mean to say you have to use all of them.

If you are finding the pages somewhere, even if they are in the first 200, then they are being indexed

Andy

[Ezpro9]

got it - thanks andy

[Andy.Drinkwater]

You're welcome Erik. Reply back if you have more questions

Andy

[Ezpro9]

hi andy-

one main concern - i am doing exact match blog post title searches to see if his posts are being indexed and none of his posts show up in serp

my other client ranks #1 for all of his exact match title searches

i hope i am makng sense here - copy/paste title into google search and i see one client rank #1 always and the other not rank at all in first 5 pages ever

client not ranking has robots.txt

User-agent: *
Disallow: /wp-admin/
Disallow: /wp-includes/ou

client ranking #1 has no robots.txt file at all

any idea why a site could rank well but blog is nowhere to be seen even for its own unique post titles?

you've been a great help - thanks!

[Andy.Drinkwater]

There are so many reason why this could be Erik.

Do you have Google+ authorship setup? Does the client?

Have a look back through Analytics and see if you can notice any hit at major dates like launch of Panda and Penguin.

I would get authorship setup and start sharing posts in there as this can help with rankings.

To be honest, it could be a long task going through everything that is a possibility, but it really wont be the Robots.txt having any impact.

Without actually getting involved, it is awkward to say exactly why this is.

Regards,

Andy

[Ezpro9]

ok andy thanks - i just always thought when you do a search for "how to sell blue widgets to starving eskimos" that the first result in serp would have to be the blog post titled "how to sell blue widgets to starving eskimos" if such a post existed ad indexed.

it's inconceivable to me how anything else could rank higher - much less not being able to find it in the first 10 pages

i am going to manually search 1000 pages just to see if i can find it at all