In Today's Issue
Search Engine Marketing
---> Title Tags Revisited
High Rankings Happenings
---> SEO Consulting Prices Slashed!
---> High Rankings SEO Site Review
Twitter Question of the Week
---> Does registering at a site to post a comment...?
Advanced SEO Forum Thread of the Week
---> Google SideWiki
Advisor Wrap-up
---> Look me up at SMX Introduction
Hey everyone!
It's been a few years since we revisited our "All About Title Tags" article. Because we've gotten tons of new subscribers since the article was published in 2007, now seems like a good time to review it. Interestingly enough, it needed very little revising because the concepts behind great title tag creation rarely change.
Enjoy! – Jill
Search Engine Marketing Issues
++Title Tags Revisited++
What Is a Title Tag?
The title tag has been – and probably will always be – one of the most important factors in achieving high search engine rankings.
In fact, fixing just the title tags of your pages can often generate quick and appreciable differences to your rankings. And because the words in the title tag are what appear in the clickable link on the search engine results page (SERP), changing them may result in more clickthroughs.
Search Engines and Title Tags
Title tags are definitely one of the "big three" as far as the algorithmic weight given to them by search engines; they are equally as important as your visible text copy and the links pointing to your pages – perhaps even more so. Yet, even though this has been common knowledge among SEO professionals for at least 10 years, it is often overlooked by webmasters and others attempting to optimize their websites for targeted search engine traffic.
Do Company Names Belong in the Title Tag?
The answer is a resounding YES! I've found that it's fine to place your company name in the title, and (gasp!) even to place it at the beginning of the tag! In fact, if your company is already a well-known brand, I'd say it's essential. Even if you're not a well-known brand yet, chances are you'd like to be, right? The title tag gives you a great opportunity to further this cause.
This doesn't mean that you should put *just* your company name in the title tag. Even the best-known brands will benefit from a few good descriptive phrases added, because they will enhance your brand as well as your search engine traffic. The people who already know your company and seek it out by name will be able to find you in the engines, and so will those who have never heard of you but seek the products or services you sell.
Title Tags Should Contain Specific Keyword Phrases
For example, if your company is "Johnson and Smith Inc.," a tax accounting firm in Texas, you would want your company's site to appear in the search engine results for searches on phrases such as "Texas tax accountants" and "CPAs in Texas." (Be sure to do your keyword research to find the best phrases!) If you prefer to work with people only in the Dallas area, you'd need to be even more specific by adding geographical modifiers to your title tags, such as "Dallas tax accountants."
Using our Dallas accountant example, you might create a title tag like this one:
Johnson and Smith Tax Accountants in Dallas
or you might try:
Johnson and Smith - Dallas CPAs
However, there's more than enough space in the title tag to include both of these important keyword phrases. I find that using 10 to 12 words in my title tags works great.
One way to include two keyphrases would be like this:
Johnson and Smith - Dallas Tax Accountants - CPAs in Dallas, TX
I've always liked the method of separating phrases with a hyphen; however, in today's competitive marketplace, how your listing appears in the SERPs is a crucial aspect of your SEO campaign. After all, if you have high search engine rankings but your targeted buyers aren't clicking through, it won't do you much good.
The idea is to write compelling titles as opposed to simply factual ones, when you can. But it also depends on the page, the type of business, the targeted keyword phrases, and many other factors. There's nothing wrong with the title tag in my above example. If you were looking for a tax accountant in Dallas and saw that listing at Google, you'd probably click it. (Note: Don't worry if some of your visible title tag info gets cut off when the search engines display your page's info; they are still indexing all the words contained within it.)
Still, you could make it a readable sentence like this:
Johnson and Smith are Tax Accountants and CPAs in Dallas, TX
I'm not as thrilled with that one. I had to remove the exact phrase "Dallas Tax Accountants" because it wouldn't read as well if it said:
Johnson and Smith are Dallas Tax Accountants and CPAs in Dallas, TX
It sounds redundant that way, as if it were written only for the search engines.
In the end, it’s really a personal preference.
Don't make yourself crazy trying to create the perfect title tag, because there's just no such thing. Most likely, either of my examples would work fine. The best thing to do is to test different ones and see which bring the most traffic to your website. You might very well find that the second version doesn't rank as well, but gets clicked on more, effectively making up the difference.
Use Your Visible Text Copy as Your Guide
I prefer to create my title tags *after* the copy on the page has been written and optimized. I need to see how the copywriter integrated the keyword phrases into the content to know where to begin. If you've done a good job with your writing (or better yet, hired a professional SEO copywriter), you should find all the information you need right there on your page. Simply choose the most relevant keyword phrases that the copy was based on, and write a compelling title tag accordingly. If you can't seem to get a handle on the most important phrases for any given page, you probably need to rewrite the page content.
I recommend that you *don't* use an exact sentence pulled from your copy as your title tag. And don't use the exact wording that's in your top headline. It's much better to have a unique sentence or a compelling string of words in your title tag.
You'll want to watch out for certain website content management systems (CMS) and blog software that automatically generate the title tag from information you provided elsewhere. Some, in fact, default to the same exact title tag on every page, which is the best way to kill your search engine leads! The good news is that most of today's CMS's and blog software have workarounds so that you can customize your title tags fairly easily. If yours doesn't, or your developer claims they can't do this, then you'll want to find a new developer or CMS as soon as possible!
Share your comments and thoughts here.
P.S. If anyone would like to republish this article, please email me your request and where it will reside, and I'll send you a short bio you can use with it for your site.
Twitter Question of the Week ++Does registering at a site to post a comment...?++
Three times in the past month I received email from websites where I had commented in their blog or had some other previous contact with them. I'm pretty darn sure I never checked off anything that gave them permission to bulk email me or put me on any newsletter lists, because I would remember that. Dontcha have to double opt-in to those types of things?
Sometimes I wonder if I'm just an old-fashioned purist to think that companies should ask your permission before emailing you with their news or whatever.
Which brings us to today's Twitter Question of the week:
"Does registering at a site to post a comment entitle them to contact you?"
Here's what my cool Tweeps had to say:
empresschang: "Only if you opted in during registering; otherwise, they are wasting their time and yours with what should be viewed as spam."
barney_tl: "Socially, yes. Commercially, no." 
Skitzzo: "Not unless they use double opt-in for commenting.
rishil: "Short ans: NO. Long ans: You give out your data without privacy policy check then it's legally acceptable."
cgw3: "I think so; you made your comment public, and if you include your email, then I would say it would be fine, and nice. :o)"
nickusborne: "Genuine one on one correspondence, yes. Autoresponder sequence, no."
AlanBleiweiss: "I would find it highly annoying and intrusive being contacted after simply leaving a comment on a post."
Suthnautr: "Entitled? All blogs require an email address by default. That's a convention from the pre-blog '90s. Depends on the email."
JulieJoyce: "I'd say that if you opt in for emailed comments, yes, but otherwise no."
I asked Julie to clarify: "@JulieJoyce, are you saying if you opt in to subscribe to that 1 thread, they are allowed to email you about other threads?"
To which she replied: "Ah sorry...if you opt in to 1 thread, they should only contact you about that thread...but that's a good question."
Exactly!
So overall, the people who follow me on Twitter seem to agree with me. Of course, it's probably a group of people skewed toward having the same thoughts on marketing that I do, or else they wouldn't be following me to begin with!
Want to participate in the Twitter Question of the Week?
Follow @jillwhalen on Twitter
Share your comments and thoughts here.
Advanced Forum Thread of the Week ++Google SideWiki++
Have you heard about Google's new project called "SideWiki" yet?
We've opened up a forum thread to discuss it here:
Google's SideWiki
Advisor Wrap-up
That's all for today!
I'll be at SMX East in NYC next week (Sunday through Tuesday). Seek me out if you're at the conference as well. It's always great meeting HRA subscribers!
Catch you there in person or here in 2 weeks! – Jill
 Today's issue is also available online in the newsletter archives. If you prefer RSS/XML please feel free to use our newsfeed here. Feel free to forward this email in its entirety to anyone you feel might be interested in it. Paid sponsor ads are clearly marked as advertisements and neither High Rankings nor Jill Whalen take any responsibility for the claims made within these ads, nor the websites they point to. Paid ads do not constitute an endorsement for the products, services or companies advertising in the newsletter. Please visit our sponsors and use your own due diligence for any purchases you make on the Internet.
|
") and am nearly finished with Bram Stoker's "
" (great read!). But the Kindle also provides a good opportunity to read more business and marketing books.
by @
," "TwitterPower," "
."
" by G. Schwartz (not for the novice) & "
" by K. Roman (bio of D. Ogilvy).
" – Seth Godin. Old but absolutely brilliant, SEOs can learn a lot from it re: creating something worthy of links.
" by Burg & Mann.
," "
," "
" (guerrilla marketing case studies).
" by Bryan Eisenberg.
" by Chris Anderson is pretty good read.
" about social media.
" is tops on my list so far this year – although it is a few years old.
."
."
." The beginning was awesome; it's starting to fade, but still great.
