Does Changing in Page Title Affect Search Ranking

Search Engine Ranking - Changing Page Title

[bilalseo]

Hello Dear Webmasters,
I have question which I had been asked before but got nothing what I was looking for. Today I'm here to ask you does is there any affect on search engine ranking of a website if we change page title. As I had experience in MSN that it affects very badly. Actually its all about how your site is trusted for a search engine. I have superb ranking in Google, but for some keywords I stuck with a same ranking since last two months, no flactuation could be made on them. Now I have decided to change index page title. Currently I have a page title, which is seo friendly but optimized with an old seo technique. Could someone suggest me is there any hard affect on ranking, if I change page title in metas. Besides, I have 50,000 visitors monthly visiting to the site and most the traffic driven on to the index page, so If I can change index page (meta page title) so could it hurts search ranking.

Thanks,

Bilal

[Tourz]

Yes

[bilalseo]

Sir what Yes... Can you explain please :)

[Tourz]

If you are doing so well with your current index page title, it is probably not a good idea to change it as you may see your current rankings go down. I have seen negative results from doing this myself. When the title was changed back to original, rankings resumed.

Instead of changing the page title to try to have improvements on certain keywords, perhaps work on adding content about those phrases on your index page. Add links (with appropriate anchor text) to internal pages with relevant content and external links.

[bilalseo]

Oh great... now thats what I really needed... great post sir.. best of luck

Thanks,

Bilal

[Tourz]

ya, now I just need to do that myself. :P

[SEOMike]

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.

[bilalseo]

I changed the page titles of my old pages I mean the subpages, I have very limited content site, as I'm providing some services to my clients. The idea that brought to me is from my brother to change old page titles, and put some new page titles to gain SE ranks... now I've very handsom ranking for my subpages those are optimized according to the new seo techniques. Thanks to all in helping me :) great ...

Thanks,

Bilal Qayyum

[bilalseo]

For SEOmike, I'd say something... in my point of view PR doesn't matter these days, the PR you are seeing is 3 months old. So it never matters at all. Yea you have dropped your ranking by -950, which is in my point of view that you have inbounds those are untrusted or weaker. This is the one reason I can explain. Now please again analyise your inbounds pointing to the fresh contents. Like you said that you have added fresh contents or text as replacement, this could hurt SE ranking but on some stages, I had changed my complete web text of the contents, but no flactuation could be made, because I have a solid link building for each content. Do not mind, I'm younger but having a skilled knowledge.

Thanks,

Bilal

PS:- If someone agree then do comment against my post and if someone not he or she must put their opinion.

[raedthakur]

I still don't understand the fluid page part mentioned a few posts above ,because in my website www.abc.com/index.html is the main page and contains list to all the new articles i post but the main layout remains same (the complete website is static).So will it fall in the fluid or stagnant category and does this affect my ranking in G ,all my other pages with the actual articles or contents remain same

does this index.html page count as a content page.

[bilalseo]

They will become stagant but after a while, but not now. Yes, index.html page will count as content page, as it is a part of your domain, but with no worth as compare to www.abc.com

thanks,

bilal

[gawnd]

We noted that we were #1 in MSN and Yahoo for a phrase from our referral logs - ranking #26 in Google. This was a 3 word phrase ex. "unique blue widgets" - our title read "cheap blue widgets". We figured we could bump up our google ranking by changing our title to "unique blue widgets". Not so, #1 ranking in MSN and Yahoo has held, but we are seeing a steady, slow drop in Google - now #42.

We may have just over-optimized for that term in Google's eyes.

[seo_india]

Changing titles could easily fluctuate your rankings. Your page title is like an entry gate of search engines.

If you change your title, google and other search engines will consume some time to reflect rankings for new titles.

However you should make sure that you do not change your titles too frequently, otherwise you could risk loosing rankings as well.

[raedthakur]

so once we have a page index ...making any changes will lower its ranking?

[gawnd]

i think the answer is maybe temporarily. in my example above we have started creeping back up.

[raedthakur]

ohhh...so as long as we change it to something that is keyword rich again ..it will gain ranking?

[bilalseo]

simple is that when you change page title search ranking will be changed, but the sites with quality inbounds and pure contents will become superb rather past ranking and the sites which are against the rules and having bad linking, stolen contents, etc could have bad impact over search engine ranking. I changed my different page titles and now they appeared in the search results with new page title and having wow ranking than they were.. :) but still remember that msn could be the most difficult search engine while treating the website with such behaviors.

thanks,

Bilal Qayyum