Similar pages with different titles - good or bad?

Need some advice on site design philosophy/Google/etc.

[Ducain]

First off, I'm not exactly sure where I should put this, so Mr. Moderator, feel free to help me out.

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I just need some basic advice on the following issue:

The quick version: Is it a good practice to have number of similar pages, with different titles, in order to promote search engine hits?

The longer version: I've noticed that the page titles seem to make at least some impact on how Google places your page. For instance, let's say you have a site about widgit photos. Your neighbor has a site about widgit images. Essentially, your sites deal in the same content, but when I search for 'widget images', I usually see my neighbor's site at the top.

My thought was that I should create a handful of pages with similar content, but with different titles. The thought isn't to mislead anyone. My thought is that I'd hate to have someone go to another site just because my page title said widgit 'photos' instead of widgit 'images'.

I'd like some of you who know these policies to chime in. I want to do everything above-board. I've researched this for two evenings, and I can't find anything matching my situation. Google seems not to like duplicate content, but I'm not sure if they're talking about my situation, or someone stealing content from another site and reprinting it on their own site.

Thanks for the time, and I'm looking forward to your advice.

JH

[simonuk]

It is good practise to use different title tags for each page but, imo, it carries little weight with search engines anymore.

I'm lucky that I have a large number of web sites all varied and different from each other. For the most part it's the text inside the page and contained within the whole web site that counts.

[Ducain]

I thought I'd hear more input on this. :(

[kneoteric_V]

I don't think essentially it is a good practice. As per search engine algorithm, it may be a threat of content duplication.

By the way, rephrase your content in such a way that it no longer seems to be copied-and-pasted from another source (even if both are owned by you).

[simonuk]

It is better to have unique title tags across the site than "untitled document" or "Widget.com" all through the site.

It *is* good practice to use them as they should be used:

index.html <title>Welcome to Widget.Com</title>
contact.html <title>Contacting Widget</title>
faq.html <title>Frequently asked questions</title>

etc etc.

*edit Added the examples

[Ducain]

Thanks for the info guys.

[rocknbil]

I don't know if I agree that site titles are irrelevant - but that ties in with a list of other factors.

Additionally, it is a Good Idea to use the title to describe the page. It's not bad, actually, to have it the same as the H1. For example, a generic title like
<title>Welcome to Widget.Com</title>

tells you nothing about the page content. I would hope I'm already welcome, and I most likely already know I'm on widget.com. (I know you were just throwing examples out.) I would only use a title like that if I'm discussing welcome mats or welcome signs, or for a page reviewing widgets.com. You're better off with something like

<title>Applying Widgets to Foo for Bar</title>

In which you discuss in detail the types of Foo and Bar to which you'd apply your widget.

The consensus is that the one element ignored is the keyword meta tag due to abuse. Title and description are indeed very important in contributing to "score" for a given set of keywords. But putting the title on pages with same or nearly the same content will have a detrimental effect as it's going to be interpreted as duplicate content, which will mean either only one of those pages will get indexed or the whole set will get dropped.

There are a lot of services that put numbers on the instances of word ocurrences throughout the various elements of a page (title, description, body, etc.) In practice, I don't know that this is true. If your content talks a LOT about widgets in ordinary English (or your language) you may easily exceed these limits. If you start doing something silly like (widgets) putting (widgets) keywords (widgets) in (widgets) randomly, or attempt to spam the page by creating hidden divs or text the same color as the background, you're sure to get penalized.

You are correct though, or at least from what I've seen - the title tag is influential in what comes up in SERPS - searching for widgets will most likely show a bunch of pages with the word bolded on the link as in "Get Widgets for Your Home". Another thing I've found is that if the meta description tag is present, it will be the description snippet used immediately following the main link, also with keywords bolded.

Keep your eye open for SERPS that say "Untitled Document" on the main link. They do get indexed - but human interpretation is as important as SE's here, how compelled would you be to follow a link that says "Untitled Document" when you're looking for Widgets?

Write unique content. Work your keywords into the title, meta description, and the page itself. Make each page targeted, that is, explore each facet of your widgets in detail; if it warrants it, pull out a portion of your discussion into another unique page that surrounds a tangent of the topic. Basically, follow the rules of good writing, this will equate to good indexing for a particular group of keywords.

All of these go out the window if your pages are duplicated, or if the meta description is the same on all pages. If you watch, you will find a great deal of SE results with exactly the condition you describe - Different titles on the main link, but all the descriptions are identical.

Inversely, I **have** seen obnoxious spam attempts doing exactly what you say - nonsensical results by the hundreds targeting a set of keywords that literally flood the SERPS with worthless entries. But they don't last long. :-)

[Ducain]

Fantastic reply. Exactly what I was looking for. Thanks for taking the time.