How do I change the titles for each page on wordpress.com?
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I’m working on SEO for a blog, and I want to change each page’s title to reflect the page’s main keywords that are mentioned on each page’s first sentence. Of course, each page has a different topic and each page has different keywords. Is there a way to edit each page’s title in WordPress.com? I already know how to edit the title for the entire blog, which copies over to each page, but I want to individualize each page’s title. There are other things that I want to change with the theme too (like remove the stupid Search bar that shows up on the right side of each page), but I need to get to the .php code to do so.
This is what I’ve discovered so far (I think) – You can’t edit theme stylesheets and code in wordpress.com. You have to use wordpress.org. If I were to buy hosting from another company, buy another domain name, download WordPress.org’s wordpress 3.6 software, export my wordpress.com blog to the host, edit the blog’s code using the wordpress.org software, and then re-import the blog to wordpress.com —- would that work? I would gladly pay for the $99 upgrade, but I don’t think that it will allow me to edit the actual php code or html title code for the blog. Any other ideas? This seems ridiculous complicated just to edit a little bit of html and php code.
The blog I need help with is: (visible only to logged in users)
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**I meant that I would gladly pay the $99 bundle upgrade on wordpress.com if it would allow me to edit each page’s title and take out the stupid search bar for each page, but I don’t think that it will let me do so.
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No, that would not work.
You have to edit each Page and change the title by hand. Don’t change the permalink or you will shoot their existing SEO in the head.
You can, if you know how to edit CSS, purchase the Custom Design upgrade and use it to hide built in theme features like search bars, etc.
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Thanks so much, raincoaster! But, how can I hand-code the title of each page in wordpress.com? I can’t figure out how to get to the title code for the pages. I can get to each page’s html body of course, but not the title. I know CSS too, so thanks for the suggestion about the search bar.
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Ugh, apparently I can’t add/edit a page’s title via CSS either (I didn’t think that I could, but I thought I would research it just in case).
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You don’t hand-code it. You click the Edit button and you change it in the little Title box on the Edit Post page and then you hit Update Post. Why would you try to do this through code?
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Changing a Page title will also change the corresponding slug when you hit “Update” so you may want to copy/paste the slug first to change it back after updating and then update again.
opinion/
Just FYI, our company’s website was hit hard by Google for doing just what you are suggesting. Keywords belong in the body content not the Page title.
/opinionAs far as removing the search widget from the sidebar on your internal pages, why not just use the full width page template instead?
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“Keywords belong in the body content not the Page title.”
Hi justjennifer, I don’t understand why your website was hard-hit by Google for matching the page title with a keyword phrase. I mean, if the keyword appears naturally in the page’s body and if the title is less than 70 characters long, then why would Google penalize your site? I could see if a site keyword-stuffs it’s body, then Google will penalize it because that’s not allowed (there are other unethical practices concerning keywords that I won’t go into here). But, Google uses titles heavily in their search engines, especially if the keyword in the title appears naturally on the site (especially if it is in the first paragraph). Even wordpress says that Google displays a title in its search results. When I do searches for keywords and phrases in Google, websites appear with the keywords in their title highlighted on Google (I view their site’s source code to confirm that Google is pulling the page up by its title). I’m just surprised that happened to your site because it doesn’t make any sense to me.
Unfortunately, the person who I’m working for doesn’t want me to change the navigation link’s title, only the page title (they are both separate entities on webpages). It looks like that will be my only choice, though, with wordpress.com. Thanks for the info.!
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**Actually, I should say that navigation links and page titles are separate entities on most sites (I’ve built several sites using different developers, like Dreamweaver, and I usually use pics for the navigation links), but I guess that they are one-in-the-same on wordpress.com.
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They don’t have to be. As I mentioned above you can change the page slug to something else.
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You can also change the label in the nav menu independently of the title and the slug, if you use a custom menu.
For details on custom menus see this post of mine: -
Thank you so much, justjennifer, raincoaster, and justpi! You all are awesome! I’m totally going to figure out how to build a custom menu. I changed the page slug a while ago (great suggestion, btw!), but that didn’t change the title, because I couldn’t figure out how to do so without changing the nav page title. But, it is still a great suggestion.
The reason why I don’t want to change the nav title but want to change the page title is something like this (this is just one example): So, I’m editing a website for a hotel that has a lot of extra stuff going on at it. One of the things that goes on at the hotel is ghost tours (I believe that it just might be haunted BTW. I had something strange happen to me the first (and only…I will be returning) night I stayed there…something that I just can’t explain away very easily).
Anyway, the manager gives ghost tours at the Elkhorn Lodge hotel, which in Estes Park, CO. But, it’s not like he gives ghost tours throughout all of Estes Park — just at the hotel. But, when people are looking for something to do in Estes Park while they are visiting, they will type “Estes Park ghost tours” as a search and not “Elkhorn Lodge ghost tours” (I already know that this search pops up more than 20 times a month, actually). But, I don’t want the navigation link to say “Estes Park ghost tours” because the tours are really only at the hotel. And yet, I talk about Estes Park ghost tours on the page, sooo…. yeah. That’s just one little example. I hope that it wasn’t too confusing. By the way, if you ever want to come to Colorado, Estes Park is absolutely amazing!!
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Perfect for a page title, but too long for the nav link title. But, problem has definitely been solved. Thanks!
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