Best Practices for Title Tags for Product Listing Page

[Kingalan1]

My industry is commercial real estate in New York City. Our site has 300 real estate listings. The format we have been using for Title Tags are below.

This probably disastrous from an SEO perspective. Using number is a total waste space. A few questions:
-Should we set listing not no index if they are not content rich?
-If we do choose to index them, should we avoid titles listing Square Footage and dollar amounts?
-Since local SEO is critical, should the titles always list New York, NY or Manhattan, NY?
-I have red that titles should contain some form of branding. But our company name is Metro Manhattan Office Space. That would take up way too much space. Even "Metro Manhattan" is long. DO we need to use the title tag for branding or can we just focus on a brief description of page content incorporating one important phrase?

Our site is: w w w . m e t r o - m a n h a t t a n . c o m

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| Turnkey Flatiron Tech Space | 2,850 SF $10,687/month |

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| Gallery, Office Rental | Midtown, W. 57 St | 4441SF $24055/month |

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| Open Plan Loft |Flatiron, Chelsea | 2414SF $12,874/month |

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| Tribeca Corner Loft | Varick Street | 2267SF $11,712/month |

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| 275 Madison, LAW, P7, 3,252SF, $65 - Manhattan, New York |

[Roman-Delcarmen]

1 - Should we set listing not no index if they are not content rich?

I strongly suggest to optimize your PLP pages they are like the categories in your website, so they are very close to your home page and should be at the top of your content structure.

So what you can do it about

• Optimize the titles and description tag
• Add schemas to those PLP
• Then markup those pages using Search Console
• Create some internal links to those pages

This are some tips from the SEO Learning Center
https://moz.com/learn/seo/title-tag

Optimal format
Primary Keyword - Secondary Keyword | Brand Name
8-foot Green Widgets - Widgets & Tools | Widget World

There are a few basic strategies that realtor can utilize to increase PLP SEO scores, site visibility, and conversions.

1. Increase the number of relevant keywords included on PLP pages by adding plain text descriptions and related keywords.
2. Embed keywords within the URLs of PLP pages
3. Raise SEO authority by decreasing bounce rate

7 Critical SEO Errors you should avoid

1. Lack of Properties Description
2. Lack of Properties Reviews
3. Not Optimizing Properties Pages Based on The Search Demand
4. Non-Unique Titles
5. Lack of “Speaking” URLs
6. A Lot of Duplicate Content

The Golden Rule of SEO – Make Usability a Priority
As you know, Google is a search engine that is very worried about its users and their experience. First of all, you should make your online store convenient and useful for customers in order to achieve its respect. What is good and unique to your clients – it’s good for Google.

The more time people spend on your site, and less they click back to the search results page is a great indication that Google is sending them to the right place.

Finally, people who like your website and what it has to offer are much more likely to link to it – and as we said before, links are what drive you to top the search results page!

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2 - If we do choose to index them, should we avoid titles listing Square Footage and dollar amounts?

I don't have experience in Real Estate and don't live in NY.
But the first thing that comes to my mind is, did you study your main competitors?
Which are your top 10 competitors? most important
What are they doing?

Base on my experience and looking some of your competitors the best solution is to use Price Ranges

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3 - Since local SEO is critical, should the titles always list New York, NY or Manhattan, NY?

There is no absolute answer to your question, because all depends on how your users make their research
So you need to make your own research, Moz and Ahrefs have the best keywords management tools in my opinion
with Moz Pro, you can create some keyword list and see the metrics

Go to your Moz account > Keyword Explorer > Create or upload new list

these are the question that you need to answer

Which keywords use your audience/users?
What is the volume of searches using New York, NY?
What is the volume of searches using Manhattan, NY?
What is difficulty level for those keywords?

When you answer those question you will have the answer that you are looking for

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4 - Talking about your branding
In my opinion, you need to forget your brand and focus on your target audience
Google does not need your brand keyword in title to know who or your company are

you can use Shemas on your site with all your brand information

Schemas for Brands
http://schema.org/Brand

Schemas for RealEstate Agent
http://schema.org/RealEstateAgent

Here is shema generator for Real Estate Agency to make your life easier
http://microdatagenerator.com/realEstateAgency.html

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Sources

Optimizing SEO for E-commerce Product Listing Pages
7 Critical SEO Errors of E-commerce Websites
9 Actionable Real Estate SEO Hacks for Real Estate Agents Looking To Get More Leads
Real Estate SEO for Beginners – Everything You Need To Start Today

IF THIS ANSWER WERE USEFUL MARK IT AS A GOOD ANSWER

[Kingalan1]

Hi Roman:

Thanks for this most detailed, terrific response!!

A few questions:

1. What does "PLP" stand for? (I'm an amateur, sorry)
2. What is search console?
3. How do I decided where to create the internal links between the pages?

REGARDING:
Optimal format Primary Keyword - Secondary Keyword | Brand Name 8-foot Green Widgets - Widgets & Tools | Widget World The above is a good example. Your suggestion to remove brand name is interesting. It provides a lot more space (characters). Good idea as long as removing brand from title is not detrimental.

But using the above "widgets" nexample what would we substitute "Brand Name" with?

What happens of some of the keywords get redundant? Like the neighborhood may be an important keyword
New York Office Space Rental / Chelsea Loft Space/ XXXXXX

We might have about 75 loft spaces, wouldn't this redundancy be bad?

Also, many, many searches use:
Manhattan office space
NYC Office space
New York City office space

And many permutations. The competition for these terms in Manhattan in insane!!! Google Adwords has many of these terms listed for $35+.

Do you think it best to have geographic keywords in schemas, title tags, descriptions or URLs?

Many of our URLS are poorly written. Do you think it best to re-write them or will the redirect reduce ranking?

Thanks again, 
Alan

[Kingalan1]

Hi Roman:

Sorry but 2 more questions:

Not sure what you mean by the below:
"I strongly suggest to optimize your PLP pages they are like the categories in your website, so they are very close to your home page and should be at the top of your content structure."

Also, regarding:

Lack of “Speaking” URLs

Is it more acceptable to rewrite the URLs of listing pages with very little page authority. I assume the redirect will make no difference if a listing has a page authority of 1-5.

If the new listing page is improves, the authority should improve.

We have about 350 pages. Do you think a good approach might be to start off trying to improve 30-40 pages to see if we are on the right track?

Thanks,
Alan

[Roman-Delcarmen]

• PLP > Product Listing Pages
• Search Console > Is the name for the old Webmaster Tools if you don't have it is a good idea to install it on your website

How do I decide where to create the internal links between the pages?
First, you need to determinate your site structure to decide how to make your internal links

Google Search Console

[Nigel_Carr]

Hi Kingalan

I did offer to help after you emailed me. I emailed back but didn't hear anything back from you.

Regards

Nigel