Page Titles

[jackson992]

How important are they to ranking?

Here are a couple of things I would love to hear input on:

Short or long titles

Add your domain to the tile or not

Repeating the title in your header(H1,2,3 etc)

using the same keywords in title in different phrases

[fathom]

How important are they to ranking?

Title is your friend!

Here are a couple of things I would love to hear input on:

Short or long titles

Short on top level pages - longer more specific on deep pages.

Add your domain to the tile or not

Forget domain - add business name to the end of the title -- note: title maximum character length 64

Repeating the title in your header(H1,2,3 etc)

Always

using the same keywords in title in different phrases

Never -- a waste of title realestate and weighing factor.

[ronniethedodger]

Short or long titles
Short on top level pages - longer more specific on deep pages.

There may be an exception to that.

I have one page that I do a paid submission for. That is my Home Page. I cannot afford the luxury of not cramming as much as I can into that title.

Add your domain to the tile or not
Forget domain - add business name to the end of the title -- note: title maximum character length 64

I have a site that the domain name is THE name. It is someone's actual name, and we are selling that name.

My domain has the .NET extension to it also, and I don't want it confused with .COM. So I have the actual domain name in the title.

Plus if I were to put the business name in there, it would be an additional 16+ characters. ;0)

I would think that it is a judgement call on this one. Whatever way you go though...be constistant all the way through for recognition purposes.

using the same keywords in title in different phrases
Never -- a waste of title realestate and weighing factor.

Exception...time out...never say never ;0)

Example...I have a case where I have a keyterm that is a possessive form of a person's name. The name is Burt and the product is Burt's Bees.

This is a tough one, in that, some people type it in as Burts Bees....and not Burt's Bees (apostrophe version). If you leave the apostrophe out on a Google search, you get that "Did you mean..." stuff. Add into this, people mis-spelling it like Burt Bee's or Burt's Bee...then you need to pick those up with some variations on the terms.

I use both forms in my titles. In fact, I have the word Bees twice and Bee once appearing in just one title.

So variations of the keyword/term work very well if you double them up. When I say double up, I mean variations of the terms. Additionally, I try to put what I call search modifying words into the title. Words like "discount", "products", "sales", etc.

Granted...I am not on top for Burt's Bees by itself. But you throw one more word into the search, pick any word or product at all....it hits page one every time. In fact, we are second only to burtsbees.com for "products" and "discount" is number one. I don't care which engine it is, they all hit very well with duplicated key word variations.

[jackson992]

Some very good posts guys and I agree with most everything said so far. My main concern with the repetition of course is Google since I had heard that Google was starting to forwn on this.

One thing I am curious about: How does a search engine know what constitutes a top level page for titles and what doesn't?

And Minstrel I expect to see an opinion from you here:P

[ronniethedodger]

My main concern with the repetition of course is Google since I had heard that Google was starting to forwn on this.

I was called onto the carpet for my titles in the Burts area. That same argument was made.

But if you take a look at the pages, the phrases are different and not spamming at all. Really only one word is actually duplicated (bees).

Google treats the possessive and non-possessive form of Burt's as two different words. It even goes as far as looking at Burt's as Burt (no 's').

Other engines like MSN are running with it very well. And Yahoo -- sometimes the results are higher than they are at Google.

Craft the title carefully to avoid the spamming aspect though. You are right about that. Repeating certain words, but in different contexts is okay in my opinion.

I would think something like "Car Bumpers - Truck Bumpers - Auto Bumper Pads" would be okay on one page...as long as these appear in the content of the page itself. And notice how both "bumper" and "bumpers" is represented also.

One thing I am curious about: How does a search engine know what constitutes a top level page for titles and what doesn't?

Linking structure and how many clicks away from the Home Page, basicly. Cross linking of pages can affect this structure too.

[fathom]

One thing I am curious about: How does a search engine know what constitutes a top level page for titles and what doesn't?

This is less about a search engine and more about content organization that can enhance ranking performance in a search engine -- the search engine really doesn't care what level the page is @.

A top level page (your main page) most often is a nav page - with little on page content specific to a single topic - it broadly covers a little of all the website.

No matter what -- strategy planning makes the difference between ranking fair and domination search results... "and you can learn alot from the supermarkets who at one time had a mish-mash of products strewn throughout their stores - but slowly realized shoppers had habits and you can make money off of habit -- you can do the same with a search engine bot.

Ronnie used an earlier example (and without knowing any of the content) I'll use to illustrate.

Honeycomb has a website called BurtsBees.com and spelled Burt's Bees. The website is about the company Honeycomb, Burt, Burts Bees, Burt's Bees, Honey Bees, Honeybees, Honey bee, Honeybee and a swarm of others. :-)

You could pretend that you only have a single webpage and cram all of this on a single page - and then because you wish to maximize your chances write the same title on every other page (say in different order so to maximize variety of phrases or you can allow your website to work as a coherent set of pages that "theme" 2 adjacent pages to every topical phrase available (and maximize your exposure with a listing plus an indent).

First the domain name matters not... people do not search for (in the masses) by domain names they search for product, service and information that can fulfill their needs from desireable companies not domains.

Anway top level page in my website for Honeycomb would be

Burts Bees by Honeycomb

...and I would use a 3 way link hierarchy of keyword/phrases to cover the vast array of potential ranking results.

1. Burts
2. Bees
3. Honeycomb

Each link in a hierarchy, content, and titles covers specific information and a page that has little info about everything isn't going to fair well (or as good as it could) without the content to support or a mass of supporting links - and if you are going to link to a page to support it... that linking page should have something in common with the "link to" page... thus titles should match the scope of content... broad topical pages should be broad but minimal number of terms since they tend to get far more links than a content specific page.

Anyway

[ronniethedodger]

and a swarm of others. :-)

That was so bad...I even liked it. ;0)

The supermarket analogy is a very good one.

You are surfing down the Internet highway via Google Route 66 when you spot a store in the corner of your eye. The sign overhead is the first thing you notice. The sign catches your eye for any number of reasons...it could be something descriptive such as a word like "hardware" or it could be the store name itself like "Home Depot".

You click on into the parking lot and dismount your surfboard and are looking at the store window underneath that same sign. All across the window are various sale signs for different products. You know by looking at these signs that you are indeed at a "hardware" store. You also have a strange feeling that it might be springtime too...cuz there are adverts for lawn mower blade sharpeners. You keep that in mind (maybe...hehehe) and continue on into another level of the store via any of the doors.

This is one of those Mega Hardware Stores that you can see the curvature of the Earth when you look down any aisle. Luckily though, up toward the ceiling are more signs for different levels of the store. You are looking for a certain type of knotty pine 2x4 and quickly notice the big sign that says "lumber"....so you mozy over to the lumber department.

Inside of the lumber department you see more signs hanging in the aisles. Plywood sheets, exterior molding, interior molding, 1x2, 2x2....ahhhhh 2x4. Now you are in the right aisle.

Once in the right aisle, you notice little signs sticking out perpindicular to the shelves. Cedar, Treated, Fir....ahhhh Knotty Pine. You grab a couple 10 footers, but also notice some coupons for 8 penny nails and say to yourself...hmmm, I might need some of those.

It is easy to find the nails too, cuz it says you can find them in aisle 140-A and you magically whip right over there and grab a sack....and head for the checkstand. It is a very nice shopping experience....so much so that you conveniently forget about the blade sharpeners thinking that you can put Spring off for at least one more week.






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[minstrel]

Fathom has already alluded to the point I wanted to add here:

The <TITLE> is valuable real estate with limited space - try to restrict it to content that is likely to be included in a search. If people already know your domain name or URL, they won't be searching for it - they'll just type it into the address bar - so you're wasting space by including it or at least highlighting it in the title.

Exceptions to this rule:

(1) I add "PsychLinks" to the END of every title tag, because if someone arrives at a secondary page from another link, I'd like them to be able to look at the top of the browser and in the History and see the word PsychLinks there (recognition factor). It's at the end because I want the spiders to see the more important information in my title first and if I run out of space I'd rather have PsychLinks drop off the end than the other stuff.

(2) on some of my pages, I include "Dr. David Baxter" in the title, similar to Ronnie's "Burt's Bees" - my rationale here is that mine is a professional service website and previous clients are more likely to remember my name than my URL if they haven't been back to see me in a while. Similarly, with Ronnie's website, a former customer might remember "Burt's Bees" but not the website name - this way, the search engine will find "Burt's Bees" or "David Baxter" for the few who need it.

[jackson992]

Thx guys for your comments. I especially loved the hardware exampple. One reason I'm thinking of using my domain in my titles at the end is for the keywords. The domains are sports to go and clothing to go. So I would think that would help pick up 2-3 word phrases for clothing as well, even if the word clothing isn't in the product title or description. Am I wrong?

[fathom]

Now I know we are all simply "nuts". Love the dialogue. :-)

You have the right idea jackson992 - just remember that the title is extremely important and getting the most important word to that "page" at the start is different than your most important keyword (as per your site, market or industry).

Also for Google 64 characters is the maximum Google will parse for the title -- beyond there is no weight so strategically you could have the "g" in clothing as the 64th character (where needed) since "to go" are common words.

There is an important side discussion here that notes how the title and page content play key roles in delivering different phrase variants to you.