Changing sitename result in google

[Marinus]

Hey guys, now, I've been working with this beautiful CMS and am superhappy with it.

Only one small problem.

When I google my site, it shows this:

https://www.google.nl/search?q=site%3Awww.marinusdebeer.nl

The common result when you search on my name is that the title shows: "about" as page title in the results.

Now, this is because this is the page I force the visitor to when they go to www.marinusdebeer.nl

I did this in a script because I don't like to use a homepage/launch page. So it goes to the about page in a hardcoded php script.

However, I want to keep the 'about' name in the page title, but is there a way I can edit meta data to make sure Google just shows a different page title, so that I can control how the title is displayed in Google?

I have been googling about this, but it didn't show up any results I could use. Maybe I am searching with the wrong search queries.

Soon I will start making the second site with ProcessWire, let's hope it goes as smooth as the first one I created

Love,

Marinus

[Marinus]

I simply added in the title of the webpage the title I wanted before the current page title gets put in. This seemed to fix the problem partially.

Still hope to find out if there is a way to force google to display a title that isn't the standard page title.

[adrian]

Google will use the content inside the page's <title></title> tags. There isn't anything you can do to change that, but you can change what goes in here in a PW template.

eg:

<title><?php echo $page->google_title; ?></title>

assuming you have a field called "google_title" in the template for that page. Of course this will also be the title that is shown as the label for the tab in the user's browser as well, so bad choice of field name, but you get the idea

Does that help?

[Marinus]

Hi thanks for your reply, well, what I already changed yesterday was turning this:

<title><?php echo $page->get("headline|title"); ?></title>

into this:

<title>Marinus de Beer - Spatial Design - <?php echo $page->get("headline|title"); ?></title>

Now works exactly like I wanted. However, I just wanted my title to display "about" on the about page's tab name. I guess I have no choice

Feel quite dumb that I couldn't come up with such a simple way of making google display my name and profession

[adrian]

So I think what you are saying is that you need a different format for your site links (that is what google calls these links to sub pages). Not sure of the rules on this, but in my experience change the order of your title tag so it reads:

About | Marinus de Beer - Spatial Design

Using the pipe vs the dash is probably not critical, but I prefer it. Google should grab the "About" from that and use it for the site link for the about sub page.

You should also make sure you have a sitemap.xml and register it with google webmaster tools.

Remember that you won't see any changes in google's results until it reindexes your site, which could take hours to weeks depending on your site. Having all the pages of your site available in a sitemap.xml will help with this considerably.

Here are a couple of links that might be worth reading (not really read thoroughly myself):

http://honestppc.com/adding-sub-links-sitelinks-results-google-search/

https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/47334?hl=en

https://www.hochmanconsultants.com/articles/sitelinks.shtml

[Marinus]

Thanks, a world of new things have opened up to me since yesterday-evening I've started looking at analytics, this afternoon I got the module working in my processwire admin, shows up nicely. However, in google analytics itself, it still says my site isn't connected, but in the analytics module in my admin I can already see results. Not sure why google's own analytics admin says it isn't working.. Must be some time-based check.

I've also been looking at the crawler, and have asked google to re-index my site with the new title.

Will look at the rest when I have time, currently graduating with a thesis that I still have to finish, so it's a bit hard to go into it deeply

Thanks for your links, the last one seems to be the most clear on how to do this, I guess this is what will really help with making my site show up better in google.

The only thing is that I probably still have to find another way of having the first page. Now when you load the site, it goes to /about directly, because I didn't know how to solve this in another way. But I don't want a home page.

[Nico Knoll]

Create a home.php template file and just add something like "<?php echo $pages->get('/about/')->render(); ?>" so you will your about page and your home page be completely identical. Or you adjust your "Home" page in the page tree to be your about page

[Christophe]

Hello,

Not sure I understand what you want.

I'm a php beginner but, you could perhaps use an if/else statement(s) (if your <title></title> code is in a separate head/header .php or .inc file) in order to only display "about" - statically or dynamically -when the "about" page is accessed (different template or not (*)).

I often use three fields instead of only two: "third_field|headline|title". The third field being for the browser's Page Title.

Perhaps (haven't tried yet if I remember well) you could create a (page?) field that contains and adds "Marinus de Beer - Spatial Design" dynamically on all pages but "about" (different template - in the Admin - that doesn't have this field (*) and/or different template file...).

Just some "ideas".