Mobile homepage title is showing unrelated text

[seoperad]

Hi all,

I've read the FAQs and searched the help center. My URL is: http://www.leibish.com/I just discover it today - when searching on mobile for the brand name (search for "Leibish") I find the following title: Reply (see the attached image).Also, when searching for site:leibish.com +reply you'll find at least a few dozens indexed pages with this title.I checked for the following:1. Link bombing - check with ahrefs and majestic - everything seemed fine.2. Alt tag or other hidden text  - couldn't find anything. 3. DMOZ or Yahoo directory submissions with this anchor text - yet, nothing.Besides the fact that I must fix this issue I find it fascinating from the SEO perspective. I need the big guns in here - can you help my resolve this mystery? :-)Thanks...

[UmarKhan]

Hey Shahar,

This is a usual tactic from google especially in desktop searches. Sometimes it creates own titles if it finds yours to be short, over-used, poorly written & stuffed with keywords.

As far as the mobile in concerned, have you tried to use Schema.org's JSON/ microdata markup?

JSON:

Microdata:
<title itemprop="name">Your WebSite Name</title>

I'm sure when next time Google index your page, your own title tag would appear.

Do check out these resources:
https://moz.com/ugc/google-serp-test-multiple-page-title-meta-description-tags (Check out the comments section too)
https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/35624?rd=1

Hope this helps to solve your mystery

Thanks,

[seoperad]

Hi Umar,

Nope, but we'll implement it.

However, I'm not sure that's the issue. That might resolve this, but still we don't understand how the "reply" came out. It seems to me it indicates a much wider issue. Also, the post you provided is not exactly the same, as it's related to a scenario in which a page have two title tags. That's not the case. Furthermore, we still don't have a clue where the "reply" came from.

[KristinaKledzik]

Wow. This is a weird one.

The way Google has used "Reply," it seems to think that's your brand name. All of the pages that show up with "Reply" in the page title other than your homepage have " - Reply" appended to the end, like a brand. I've seen Google do this a lot when page titles are just the title of the article, without the brand appended.

The question I can't answer is, why does Google think your brand name is Reply? One really out there idea I have: does Leibish sound like any words in Hebrew that Google may think it's translating for us?

Anyway, my guess is that your unspoken question is, how do I get Googlebot Mobile to label my site correctly? I would:

• Append your actual brand name to the end of every page title on your site. It looks like you rarely do this, so Google isn't seeing your brand name in <title>tags at all, which may be confusing it.</li> <ul> <li>Your titles are already on the long side, so I'd take this time to trim them as well. I like to use <a href="http://www.seomofo.com/snippet-optimizer.html">SEOmofo </a>to test out page titles as I write them.</li> <li>My first suggestion is for you to cut out the SKU - people rarely search for those, and if they do, Google will match them with the text on your page.</li> <li>Also, be a bit less sales-y. Google doesn't love "Buy" in page titles, which you have on your category pages.</li> </ul> <li>Use schema.org to mark up your site, labeling Leibish as the "Name" and probably marking up your address and phone number while you're at it. </li> </ul> <p>I only have two bullets because really...it seems like Google is being dumb here.</p> <p>Anyway, I hope this helps! I'm sorry I wasn't able to come up with more insights. Let us know how things go.</p> <p>Best,<br />Kristina</p></title>

[seoperad]

Hi Kritina,

Thanks for the very through answer. We have implmented the schema.org and removed the "buy" keywords from all the titles.

However, it still seems we see the reply in the titles.

I thought about other option - perhaps it's concerning the mobile serving - they use the dynamic serving method. Do you think there might be an issue in here?

[KristinaKledzik]

I thought of that, but from what I remember, you still have <title>s on the mobile version of the HTML, right?</p> <p>Also, I double checked, and "site:leibish.com reply" returns desktop results with "- Reply" appended, too, though it looks like it's only doing that to your blog pages. Do you have any internal settings in the blog that may be off?</p></title>

[seoperad]

Not really. I can only think of the Facebook blog comments (with the word reply), but it doesn't make sense Google would use it that way.

[KristinaKledzik]

Gosh, this is so weird.

I will say, it looks like on desktop results all of the pages that end in "- Reply" are your blog pages which haven't been recrawled since you appended your brand name. You might want to go into GWT (or, Search Console, now, because Google likes keeping us on our toes) and "Fetch" the top pages that show up with "- Reply" and ask Google to add them to the index. Hopefully, if Google sees all of these pages showing up with your proper brand, it'll figure things out quicker.

[KristinaKledzik]

Hi Shahar,

Okay, this one has stumped me enough that I reached out to Moz associates, who were equally surprised. Rand tweeted about it, and the SEO of another site has the same problem, but no one can see anything that you or they are doing that's wrong enough to warrant this. Google's clearly got a bug.

So, my (and Rand's) broad advice is to make your brand as clear as possible:

• Make sure that all of your page titles end in your brand name. I know that you've just updated your blog posts to append your brand name, but double check that there aren't other pages on your site without it.
• Make sure that your title tag structure is clear. You have some title tags that start with your brand name and others that end in it. Choose one or the other (I prefer to end with it) and set that up across the whole site. The only exception here is your homepage, which can start with your brand when everything else ends in it.
• Use your brand name on your page more often. Leibish is on your homepage 3 times; my company's homepage uses our brand name 21 times. Don't do this to the point of keyword stuffing, of course, but find ways you can use it more often.

That's all I've got - we're all keeping our fingers crossed for you! Let us know if things start to right themselves.

Best,

Kristina

[seoperad]

Hi Kristina,

Thanks for that, I really appreciate it. I'll follow Rand's tweet for additional insights.