5

I have a blog which I run on Github pages.Since this is a new blog, I decided to rewrite some posts from my old blog which had good ranking and organic search results to drive back some traffic.

So my question now is where is the search term/keyword "Home" coming from in the search result on Google.There is no Home keyword in my blog post, there is only one in my home page.

Here is a screenshot below of Google search result which comes up.

Google search result snap

What am I doing wrong here? Is there any way that I can optimize the content, even though I do not plan to earn with ads with my blog, I just wanted it to be at least cleaner with the search results.

Stephen Ostermiller
  • 98,758
  • 18
  • 137
  • 361
Madusudanan
  • 153
  • 4
  • Google can rewrite the title of a page if it considers your existing one is not optimized for its users. – Zistoloen Jan 06 '15 at 16:49
  • How to optimize it in that aspect ? I know it is a subjective question, but any links to learn would be helpful. – Madusudanan Jan 06 '15 at 16:50
  • You can read this: https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/35624?hl=en. – Zistoloen Jan 06 '15 at 16:52
  • Thank you very much for the link.I guess then this question isnt adding much value.Should I be deleting it? – Madusudanan Jan 06 '15 at 17:02
  • 2
    Here is a fairly short answer where I describe some of this: http://webmasters.stackexchange.com/questions/69050/my-title-tag-doesnt-appear-to-be-getting-crawled-by-google-properly/69080#69080 however, your case seems to be really really odd. I cannot figure out where the - Home is coming from. I say wait a while and see if Google changes it. It maybe partly a peculiarity due to the changes. BTW- You question is fine. I will up-vote it. – closetnoc Jan 06 '15 at 17:10
  • @closetnoc : Thank you very much :) .I'll probably try to optimize it in the ways you have mentioned and see how it shows up. – Madusudanan Jan 06 '15 at 17:13
  • 1
    I have other answers out there that are detailed for seo. Just click on my profile on the top of the page then the SEO tag. This will list my SEO answers. Some are fantastic if I do say so myself. ;-) Others are shorter to answer a specific question. I noticed that you use h4 tags. I used to do this as not to stand out, but now I would recommend using h1, h2, h3, etc. in order. H1 for overall topic to support the title tag (though not a copy or near copy), and h2 for sub-topics for the page. After that, it is up to you. – closetnoc Jan 06 '15 at 17:24

1 Answers1

4

Google is attempting to append your site name to your title. Most sites put the site name at the end of titles themselves because:

  • It is good for branding
  • It differentiates your listing in the search results and makes users more likely to click
  • Its better at the end of the title than at the beginning because having the site name get truncated isn't a big deal.

Since you don't add your site name to your title yourself, Google is attempting to do it for you so that your site looks more professional in their results and gets more clicks.

Unfortunately, your site appears to be named "Home". The title of your home page doesn't say your brand name, it just says "Home". You should change your home page title to "Samurai Coder".

You might also want to configure your site to append " - Samurai Coder" to the end of the title of every page. I would consider doing so good practice from an SEO standpoint.

Stephen Ostermiller
  • 98,758
  • 18
  • 137
  • 361
  • But my site is called "Home" :( – Qix - MONICA WAS MISTREATED Jan 11 '15 at 17:25
  • If you really want to call your site "Home", then Google is doing the right thing. "Home" doesn't match your domain name, and is possibly the most generic name for a site you could possibly come up with. I would suggest that you don't actually want to call you site "Home". – Stephen Ostermiller Jan 12 '15 at 13:16
  • You were right.After your suggested update, the search results are showing up correctly,with Samurai... appended to the title. – Madusudanan Jan 14 '15 at 05:39
  • It seems google is also appending the sitename when it shouldn't, I have a site named XXX, my titles look like this "XXX | Page title" and Google is outputing "XXX | Page title - XXX". – cglacet Mar 28 '24 at 09:45