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Since the <title> is probably the biggest on-site SEO factor, is it possible that having more than one would boost your ranking? Lower it?
I'm sure multiple <title>s is invalid HTML... if you had several titles, which one would take precedence?
Is there any other rationale behind doing this that I haven't thought of?
titleFrom an SEO perspective, it's pot luck - the spider might consider all the elements, just one (but who know which?) or maybe none of them at all.
Someone trying to implement a blackhat technique that no longer works, or
Someone who doesn't know anything about html and uses a poorly designed wysiwyg to spit out all the html.
...Someone trying to implement a blackhat technique that no longer works...
But my question to you and everyone else is: do you actually KNOW that multiple titles have no positive effect on SEs? We can all sit here and hypothesize that it's a futile, amateur technique... but does anyone have proof that two titles is not better than one for SE's?
We all pontificate about SEO tactics that work/don't work, when there's probably less than 5 people on this entire forum who have ever gotten even a glimpse of the Google algorithms. So while I can deduce on my own that someone utilizing 8 sets of <title> tags is probably a misguided novice, that doesn't mean they're not doing something right by accident.
Just wanna know if anyone has proof either way.
We all pontificate about SEO tactics that work/don't work, when there's probably less than 5 people on this entire forum who have ever gotten even a glimpse of the Google algorithms. So while I can deduce on my own that someone utilizing 8 sets of <title> tags is probably a misguided novice, that doesn't mean they're not doing something right by accident.Just wanna know if anyone has proof either way.
i disagree with this! :)
whilst to a degree it is always speculation, there are many here who test rigorously and what they find could be considered informed speculation not pontification.
i don't consider myself a seo, just a retailer turned web developer but part of that is a/b testing various parts of our websites for various reasons - mostly not se related i admit, but patterns certainly emerge.
do you actually KNOW that multiple titles have no positive effect on SEs?
If you are looking for THE definitive answer, you should ask Matt Cutts. My gut tells me probably not based on the fact that this was once a common blackhat technique years ago. I'm sure any benefits it may have yielded have now been nullified as search engines become more sophisticated. C'mon, that is such an easy one for G to find. As we all know, there are so many variables that affect rankings in the serps. The site in question could be ranking at the top for several reasons that have nothing to do with the title tag repetition...
The niche it ranks well in could be very small. Do other sites try to rank for the same keyword?
The site could have been established years ago and because of its age, G might consider it the authority site.
The site could be very popular and get a heathly amount of traffic from a loyal fanbase, making it an authority site in G's eyes.
I wanted to know if you or anyone here actually had the first-hand experience (or carnal knowledge of algorithms) to be able to say that this indeed does not work, rather than simply saying "well, it's so stupid that it can't possibly work", because I can speculate that myself without any testing.
Also, I didn't mean to indicate that this site has its multiple titles to thank for its ranking... there's no doubt in my mind that the popularity of the site is what causes it to be ranked well. I was asking about generic SEO and HTML theory, not about the speculative reason for this particular site's good ranking. Apologies if it came across another way.
At any rate, thanks all for the insight.
