digitalghost - 7:09 am on Jan 6, 2003 (gmt 0)

>>The first 7-9 words of a title tag are the most important.

Okay, you said feel free... :)

First off, if you have 7-9 words in your title, it is probably too long. That means 7-9 words in headers, metas and anchors. Too long for me. I prefer short focused titles that come as close as possible to what people type into search boxes. From several studies I have seen or conducted, 3-4 word phrases top the list unless they are searching specifically for a person.

>>Google likes titles that have grammatical structure

Maybe, but I know people like grammatical structure and many of them search for phrases that make sense. The don't search for "socks, white, large" they search for large white socks. Go figure.

>>The title tag isn't the end all be all for getting you to the top of the serp

Yep, yer right. But the title is the starting point. The title should dictate the content of the page, that's it. Doesn't get any simpler than that. Headers, metas, first para and anchors that support the page shoudl all contain those keywords and nothing else. Page focus. It is all about focus.

<added>Except of course for the first para, which should mention the keywords as soon as possible. </added>