<title> builder for blog, author, and topic listing pages
There has been a lot of chatter regarding using reporting services like SEMRush and Moz which will give you site audits. Usually, these reports give back information such as errors and issues One of the major errors I've seen reported on a lot of HubSpot sites are the Duplication errors for things such as:
Duplicate content: This is usually caused by the /page/1 not being properly redirected from the start. You have to create three directs total to fix that. Another cause for duplicate content is that listing pages do not have the ability to have a self-referencing canonical (which is fixed with some quick HubL in the blog template header).
Duplicate Titles: Caused by all the paginated pages showing the same title.
Duplicate Meta Descriptions: Same cause as above
The first bullet, as mentioned, can be fixed with using URL mapping tool and HubL, the last two, however, we have zero control over. I know we can use JS to change the titles and meta's for the listing and Google's searching should be ok with checking those differences on the page. This can be tedious to do and a much better way would be to allow us to have a "Page Title Builder" in the SEO & Crawlers Tab. This can let us fi page titles and have them render server side rather than relying on JS to fix things and hoping they will be picked up during the next Google crawl.
I have created a mockup below for this (based on Yoast's SEO WP Plugin) to better explain a possible solution:
Also, I think it would be awesome to have Description fields added to the blog topic's so we can create custom Meta Descriptions based on those topics and not have to rely on just the default blog meta description or one that Google pulls automatically (which is usually the post excerpt of the most recent post for that page).
This issue remains one that we plan to fix, but since we don't currently have a clear timeline on the development I'm going to mark it as 'being reviewed'. I will post another update when we have more to share.
I've been chatting with AJ and a few other folks about this, and wanted to update this idea.
The quick answer is that we know that the inability to edit listing pages is a pain point and we're looking to solve for it long term. We plan on making any page editable in the CMS, but getting there is unfortunately non-trivial.
From my research I've only seen this picked up by 3rd party tools like Moz and Screamingfrog. @ravenousblue I'll shoot you an email to see what you're seeing in Google Search Console because my impression has been that this is annoying (clients see errors in other tools) but not actually strongly impacting SEO (Google understands these are listing pages from the rel canonicals).
I believe SEMrush now also correctly ignores listing pages for their duplicate content checks.
Thanks for your patience as we fix this the right way!
Re: builder for blog, author, and topic listing pages - changed to: In Planning
Currently, all the listing pages, both numbered and archived, have no variation in the <title> tag. This is causing negative SEO impact, and I think it should by default include the listing page number or date for archibes in this <title>. Or is there currently a way to do this?
This is an idea I had posted over on the old Uservoice forum but didn't make it across to the new forum. I still feel this would be useful for SEO as discussed in Hubspot's own approach to topic pages: https://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/technical-seo (Custom H1 & Intro on Topic Pages)
It would very useful from an SEO standpoint to be able to customize the following areas of topic pages without roundabout template customizations:
Title
Meta description
H1
As not every topic page is worth indexing in search engines but still may be a useful navigation or filtering tool it would be useful to be able to control a topic page's
Canonical URL (I realize this is unlikely as it is a powerful feature, but if not then a noindex feature)
Meta Robots Index / Noindex (blocking via robots.txt doesn't always do the trick on its own)
We often see CMS users go crazy with topics (and categories and tags on other CMSs). This can produce a lot of duplicate and not so useful topic pages. The answer is often to work through merging and deleting those pages, but that can be a time-consuming process. The client also doesn't always want to be selective with how many topics they create and use. The above features would make it easier to optimize topic pages to drive more traffic.
I am surprised to find out that there is no possibility on HubSpot to add a specific SEO title (page title) to a blog post or news article.
Often, in addition to the main title of a post it can be useful to have a second title that is more suitable for SERPs. All the editroial systems and CMSs I worked with so far were able to do so.
It would be great if you can integrate this function in future. Thank you!
Definitely having the same issue and as a new partner, was really surprised this was not something sorted / handled in the system already. Keen to find out how agencies get around the lack of meta title control for COS Blog. It seems by default COS optimisation recommendations and page title does not allow for unique Meta title control and page title control in the Blog. Sure we can do custom hubl but it seems to conflict with the COS HubSpot approach and the lack of documentation is a concern. Moz goes into great depth but Hubspot does not allow for this level of control by default. For an inbound focused company like HubSpot and Partners this is a concern. I haven't fully tested general website pages yet but it seems to be set up better and clearly says page titles is for search engines and browser titles.
We have done the below for now but to explain this to a client and then explain them that the optimisation tool in HubSpot will not consider this in its recommendations is not realistic / managable. I know with the content strategy tool and topic cluster approach, keywords are not the sole focus but it's still essential to optimise pages correclty.
Here's the work around shared by a developer, which support has confirmed is the best work around currently.
Yup, lots of duplicate titles for blog list pages. One year from this post and this isn't solved? How can HS claim SEO out of the box when this very basic issue is not solved?
I am seeing this issue now in SEMRush and Console. I contacted support and still no true resolution. This is not good when I need to explain how I am addressing SEO issues and have my hands basically tied.
This would be a huge addition to the web page settings. For anyone who uses SEO graders of any kind, this would immensely improve reporting and make a lot of clients ecstatic to see their SEO scores reflect the good work they've put in.
I've been chatting with AJ and a few other folks about this, and wanted to update this idea.
The quick answer is that we know that the inability to edit listing pages is a pain point and we're looking to solve for it long term. We plan on making any page editable in the CMS, but getting there is unfortunately non-trivial.
From my research I've only seen this picked up by 3rd party tools like Moz and Screamingfrog. @ravenousblue I'll shoot you an email to see what you're seeing in Google Search Console because my impression has been that this is annoying (clients see errors in other tools) but not actually strongly impacting SEO (Google understands these are listing pages from the rel canonicals).
I believe SEMrush now also correctly ignores listing pages for their duplicate content checks.
Thanks for your patience as we fix this the right way!
I'm having the same duplicate problem with AHrefs. If you have info you are sharing to Moz and screaming frog, that we could also share to AHrefs so they can ignore the duplicates for tagged topics, and author listings please let me know. If there is somewhere else I should upvote this, please let me know ASAP.