YH-01: Rewrite post titles as exact-match titles that don’t truncate

  • Source document: .agents/yahoo-seo-visibility-plan.md (Phase 3 item 1 “Exact-Match Title & H1 Alignment”)
  • Owner: 🤖 Agent (Content Curator); the user should review the priority list
  • Priority: Medium
  • Status: Not started
  • Depends on: None

Task

Tighten title: front matter on posts, starting with “Best X for Y” and “X vs Y” buyer/comparison pages. Each title should front-load the exact search query and fit within about 65 characters, including the site suffix.

Context

  • _includes/head.html renders <title> as YH-01: Rewrite post titles as exact-match titles that don’t truncate - Jack High Bowls. The suffix adds 18 characters.
  • On 2026-11-04, 249 of the 347 posts have a title longer than 65 characters once the suffix is added.
  • Bing and Yahoo weight exact-match keywords in <title>, <h1>, <h2> and URL slugs more heavily than Google does.
  • Example from the plan: “Best Lawn Bowls for Beginners (2026 UK Buyer’s Guide)”.
  • Don’t change permalinks or slugs. That would break inbound links and indexed URLs.
  • Options: (a) shorten titles; (b) add an optional seo_title: front-matter key used only in <title>/og:title and keep the longer on-page H1; (c) drop the suffix when the title is already long. Agree on the approach with the user before bulk editing.
  • Add year modifiers only where the content really has been refreshed for that year.
  • AGENTS.md rule: update last_modified_at on every post file changed.

Completion criteria

  • Approach agreed (shorten vs seo_title vs suffix logic).
  • All “best”, “vs” and “review” posts have a rendered <title> of 65 characters or fewer, starting with the target query.
  • H1s stay consistent with the title intent; no permalinks changed.
  • last_modified_at updated on edited posts.
  • bundle exec jekyll build completes without errors.