Page Names vs Page Titles

[writermom]

This is another question related to yesterday's thread on "Custom URL?"

I have one more questions about page names vs. page titles and how it relates to SEO.
I get that my page names are WAY too long and need to be shortened. (It was a "duh" moment when I realized I've done it already for my "home" page but the title was the name of my website.) But I have many pages that are on the same subject, such as "pregnancy." It's easy to match the "title" of the page to the title of the article but can I use the same simple page "name" such as "pregnancy" for all the pages that have the same subject or is that SEO taboo? How do I optimize that for SEO? (Obviously I'm confused!)

[LBA]

I'm not an SEO expert but it's my understanding that the best way to optimize for search engines is to build a site that is so good and so filled with relevant content that it fills the need for many people and subsequently attracts lots of site traffic. When Google sees all that, they know you have something useful to offer and they rank you accordingly. All else is just an attempt to trick Google into thinking you have something that''s not there... and to that, I figure Google spends a whole lot more money trying not to be tricked than all the tricksters combined and so it's really not all that easy to beat them with mere page titles. I would try to use brief but relevant and meaningful titles and then get on with the task of making a tremendously useful website.

[antonsvideo]

if all pages have the same page name, they will all show the same content, unless you have each page in a unique folder with a unique name, making the url even longer

I publish by asset type only, each page name must be different, such as pregnancy1.html, pregnancy2.html etc

search engines don't care about page name, they only care about title and description and content and make sure there is no duplicate content in your pages

many people make the mistake of having 4 home pages seen by google with the same content such as:

http://-----.com
http://www.-----.com
http://-----.com/index.html
http://www.-----.com/index.html

so make sure, google can only see one of these url's by using permanent 301 redirecdts and or <link rel="canonical" href="http://www.-----.com/"> in between heads of home page layout

[writermom]

Thanks. I was wondering if I could use "pregnancy1," "pregnancy2" and so forth for all my pregnancy pages but change the titles accordingly. If I understand this correctly, yes, I can. I am familiar with 301 redirects but I'm not familiar with <link rel="canonical" href="http://www.abc123.com/">. Do you know where I can learn more about that?

[franko]

I'm not familiar with <link rel="canonical" href="http://www.abc123.com/">. Do you know where I can learn more about that?

Google's webmaster pages. Very useful and worth spending a few hours studying.

What Laurence says above is perfectly correct. People waste a lot of time and money trying to get better organic rankings in Google but the big G employs the best software engineers in the biz to make sure that the search results cannot easily be manipulated.

Here's a regularly updated list of the criteria Google use to rank. It's helpful but only if you have useful, relevant content as Laurence said.

[writermom]

Thanks, Franko. I will look into canonical.
I agree that Content is King, and on my site I've spent years developing useful articles for moms pregnant with twins but I also want to make sure that I'm using NOF correctly as I'm not a programmer; I'm simply a writer trying to make the best website I can with the little tech knowledge I have!

[Allison Moore]

On 6/7/2012 12:32 AM, writermom wrote:
> Thanks. I was wondering if I could use "pregnancy1," "pregnancy2" and so
> forth for all my pregnancy pages but change the titles accordingly.

That's what I do. Works fine.

Allison

[gotFusion]

Little late to the party but you may find some of this helpful

http://www.gotfusion.com/tutorials/tut.cfm?itemID=4051

[writermom]

Thank you to all. This is all very informative. I'm learning so much.