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So we have an extra eleven words to play with. Each particular phrase will dramatically benefit from repetition in the title and we have plenty of scope so here are the two things I would recommend: Firstly you could repeat the original keyphrase but in a different order, this would boost the density of each keyword without being a complete duplicate. It would also take into consideration the variations of the order of the search queries we are optimizing for. An example would be: Cheap Fishing Rods for Sale: MikesFishingRods.com Sales of Cheap Rods For Fishing This title is completely search engine safe, the keyword density is fine, it will be strong against future search algorithm changes and it even fits in to the cliché of being under 100 characters at a mere 87 characters. The above title is the style I would recommend for any new or young site on the web. If your site is a bit more experienced, i.e. it has plenty of keyword weighted inbound links then I would recommend related keyword matching. For our current example let’s mix it up a bit by adding variations of the words involved: ‘cheap’ can become ‘discounted’, ‘fishing rods’ can also be requested as ‘fishing tackle’ and ‘for sale’ could be ‘selling’. These words are related and all provide various matches that you can optimize for in your description meta tag and web page content. The title would then look something like this: Cheap Fishing Rods For Sale, MikesFishingRods.com Selling Discounted Fishing Tackle For both of these title examples, it has been taken into consideration the search engines tendancy to ignore ‘pure optimization’. That means continued repetition of a keyphrase with no variances. In the ‘olden days’ there were things called doorway pages. These were pages with exactly the same content but with various keywords splashed about the place. The search engines combated this by raising the duplicate content filters. Now, with advanced scripting these types of doorway pages can be masked so search engines have now begun to filter out over optimized pages. This means that if your title, meta description, headers, comment tags, alt tags, bold words, linking text etc etc. all contain the exact same phrase ‘cheap fishing rods for sale’ then you will be considered a doorway page as any page that actually was selling cheap fishing rods would not have the exact same phrase repeated over and over, there would be variations. Both these titles conform to this thinking, what could be considered spam is: Cheap Fishing Rods for Sale: MikesFishingRods.com Cheap Fishing Rods for Sale So, we now know what to put in, what not to put in and the best order to put them in. Now we need to know where to place them. The < title > < /title > tags are best placed immediately after the opening header tag < head > followed by the meta description tag and the meta keyword tag. DO NOT - enter more than one title tag or copy the title and place it anywhere else on the page such as the description meta tag, comment tags or in the body content. Also do not repeat the same title for each page. If you have several pages each pertaining to a different manufacturer of fishing rods then make each title unique and contain keyword relating to each page. Each title can contain your chosen keyphrase ‘Cheap Fishing Rods For Sale: MikesFishingRods.com’ but should then be followed up with at least 50% more rankable words (i.e. not ‘stop words’) which in this case would be an extra 3-4 words such as: Cheap Fishing Rods for Sale: MikesFishingRods.com Antique Fishing Rods Gallery Cheap Fishing Rods for Sale: MikesFishingRods.com Saltwater Rods For Sea Fishing Cheap Fishing Rods for Sale: MikesFishingRods.com Custom Fishing Rod Building That’s all you need to know about titles. They do add to your ranking, they always will, but what you need to remember is that people will see your title, it is placed in bold, underlined bright blue letters on the search engine results page and is therefore your first impression. If you are ranked at No.3 but your title is better than No’s. 1 and 2 then you’re more likely to be clicked. Honestly. Written by Michael Beverley Director, Internet Heaven www.internet-heaven.co.uk If you have your own mailing list and would like to use this material to send your clients, please state this using the email form above. If you do not you will be in violation of copyright infringement which we will take action upon. We're nice people and generally will be flattered that you want to use our articles and we've never said no yet. Don't cheat the system, let's all keep above board. |