Disclaimer: I don’t know if this website Im about to show used Ghost. Although I noticed some interesting points on a particular SERP compared to others
Josh Bersin’s SERP shows the website address without https and www - how does he do that, is that good for SEO?
Josh Bersin’s SERP also shows the name of the site above the website address, on my GHOST site it shows the website address eg. joshbersin.com
Is there something I need to change for it to work?
It doesn’t matter if you use a www or non-www domain as long as they are consistent. I always go with www. so that when you use tools like google search console you can better segment performance between www.domain.com and app.domain.com whereas if you have a non-www you get it all grouped together. You will need to have the https as Google doesn’t list listing non ssl domains.
I couldn’t tell you the exact reason why Josh Bersin’s name appears in the header. It is either external data sets, social signals or something else. Again its not something I would worry about, unless it is displaying the wrong name.
Google is basically rewriting titles (also of the website) since a few years, if it doesn’t like the original one or it thinks it makes sense. In this case, I suppose it rewrote the website name because Josh is in the knowledge graph, it is a trustable and very well known author (have a look at the E-A-T factors to understand this).
It’s perfectly normal, since Google does more of it on the mobile SERPs lately. If you try to see from web, you can see that there is no rewriting:
Hi @block I totally agree, Google will rewrite titles to better fit the queries but @Leepish wasn’t talking about the title tag. He was asking about the element above the URL see screenshot.
In fact I specified up here why Google also rewrote the site name ;)
Thanks everyone for your inputs. How do I give Google the confidence to rewrite the title to the name of the site?
I am using the Headline theme as are other publications and theirs is showing the title correctly.
You can’t, really. Google will rewrite the title or use one of the H2s or H3s at its own discretion, when it thinks it’s relevant. The best thing you can do is make sure your Page Title, H1 and H2s and H3s are as relevant to search intents are possible.
Actually Google started rewriting the titles around 2 years ago, when there was the common practice between SEOs to write the H1 and Tag Title differently. When Google rewrites the Tag Title to resemble the H1, it suggests dissatisfaction with the original Tag Title, providing an opportunity for optimization.
Well, that depends on if you’re seeing constant rewrites, or intent-specific rewrites. You’re correct that if you’re always seeing a rewrite, then yes, it suggests “dissatisfaction” with the original.
In my experience though, that’s rare: you mostly get rewrites for specific intent-based queries, where the subheads are a better match to the intent.
