<TITLE> vs <H1>

Are they equally valuable?

[Mohamed_E]

Many users find pages deep in my site by searching for the name of a mountain. Unfortunately they use, in equal numbers, "Mt. ABC" and "Mount ABC", which Google clearly considers different.

Initially I believed that the <TITLE> and <H1> tags were equally valuable, and simply used one form in the <TITLE> and the other in the <H1>. Now I am beginning to believe that the <TITLE> is more important.

Is it? If so, would you recommend that I use the rather ugly and spammy looking:

<TITLE> Mount ABC, Mt. ABC</TITLE>

This looks even worse when a page covers two mountains (alas, most do):

<TITLE> Mount ABC, Mount DEF, Mt. ABC, Mt. DEF</TITLE>

I feel that I have to repeat Mount or Mt before each name to get the advantage of adjacency.

Thanks!

[martinibuster]

I just did a search for Mount/Mt. Whitney with interesting results. The top two are the the same for both searches and the difference in the following serps line up according to what's in the title tag followed by a mixture of Whitney in title tag and Mt/Mountain in text.

I also noticed that not too many sites list Mount Whitney in their title tag, with more sites listing themselves as Mt.Whitney (presumably to SAVE SPACE for "more important" info, like their dotcom name).

So there's less competition for Mount Whitney than Mt. Whitney in the title tag.
If that's the case across the board with other mountains, and the search queries are equal for both MT. and Mount, it seems reasonable to optimize the title for "Mount" as well as in the body text and description.

However, if you have lots of content, it makes sense to dedicate a page to each variation so you're nailing it down.

That's what I would do and I'd appreciate if anybody else wanted to elaborate on this topic because it's pretty interesting.

[edited by: martinibuster at 12:27 am (utc) on Aug. 10, 2002]

[pageoneresults]

> <TITLE> and <H1> tags were equally valuable.

I would still believe that! Now what you need to do is focus on the copy that is in <p>, <li>, <ol>, <ul>, <a href>, <a title>, <alt> and a few other areas.

For the title, I might do something like...

Mount ABC - Rock Climbing at Mt. ABC

or...

Mt. ABC - Rock Climbing at Mount ABC

Something to that effect.

[edited by: pageoneresults at 12:26 am (utc) on Aug. 10, 2002]

[Robert Charlton]

Your two-Mount title might be the easiest situation to optimize for.... More critical than adjacency here might be word order. If these terms aren't super competive, an intervening word or two in the title might not matter. Inverted word order might make a difference, though. I don't think the period after "Mt." matters at all.

The title:

<title> Mount ABC, Mt. DEF</title> ...

targets Mount ABC, Mt DEF, and Mount DEF, and to a less extent Mt ABC (Again, I'm assuming that Mt DEF and Mt. DEF are the same).

You can help the situation by putting exact matches on the page or in link text to the page.

[martinibuster]

Robert is right on target. Word order is very important, especially in the title.

[ciml]

I would either use pageoneresults idea of "Mount ABC - Rock Climbing at Mt. ABC" or optimise _every_ aspect of the home page around "Mount ABC" and every aspect about another page around "Mt. ABC".

If you don't have the same target phrase in the title, body text (preferably H1 and elsewhere in the page) and the anchor text of incoming links; then the page will not reach its potential. If using the separate pages approach, I would pick the most competitive or most rewarding for the home page.

[Mohamed_E]

If you don't have the same target phrase in the title, body text (preferably H1 and elsewhere in the page) and the anchor text of incoming links; then the page will not reach its potential.

I am beginning to see a solution, though this will take a lot of work and a long time.

Right now I have one page for each mountain, that contains objective information (trails, distances, elevation gains etc). I am just starting to add trip reports, which describe my own hikes and my subjective experiences.

So whenever I have two pages for a mountain I should optimize one for Mount ABC and the second one for Mt ABC? NEVER use the term that I am not opimizing for on that page?

In August 2001 (best month of that year) I had about 50 uniques a day. This month I am running a bit over 300 a day. Seems that my time on WebmasterWorld has been well spent! Thank you all.

[ciml]

> So whenever I have two pages for a mountain I should optimize one for Mount ABC and the second one for Mt ABC?

I would either do that or work both into the title. What does not work well for me is a title of "Mt ABC: Trails up the Mount", as "Mount ABC" isn't together.

> NEVER use the term that I am not opimizing for on that page?

I wouldn't worry about that, in fact I would definitely use the other term when linking to the other page. The presence of the other word won't water down your density any more than the presence of words like "trail".

[dwhite]

Hmm.. I would hope that Google counts any big text to be as important as <h1>.
For example, I often use the <span style="font-size:40px"> tag, as it has advantages over <h1>...

[tedster]

I don't think Google will count any big text as heavily as an H1 tag.

An H1 tag is a logical structure - the heading for the entire page and therefore very important, if the logical structure of H tags is prevserved.

I haven't seen evidence that that font size matters - in fact, more and more it's declared in an external file. Emphasis coming from <b>, <strong, <i>, and <em> matters, but if Google were to count on-page styles without counting externally declared styles, they would be hindering the progress of the web.

You can get any visual effect you need for an H tag, as far as I've seen, with appropriate styles.

[dwhite]

Hi Tedster,
Good point about the external font styles (unless there's a way for Google to somehow recognise this?).
The problem with the <h1> tag, is that it often leaves a big gap underneath (and it can only be a certain size of course).
How does Google treat <h2> and <h3> btw?

[tedster]

You can eliminate as much of the margin as you want between H tags and the following text using css. We've discused it in the Browsers Forum, and I just began a new CSS resource thread [webmasterworld.com] with one method.

Likewise, the font-size is totally controllable with stylesheets. H1 tags help the search engines know what your page is about. They're a tool I would not lightly ignore.

I see evidence that H2 tags get some extra punch - or at least they do sometimes. This may be a factor that fluctuates in the algo - and of course, too much abuse of H1 or H2 would mean Google would need to take a balancing action. Indeed, they may well have done so.

I can't say for sure about H3 on down. Logic dictates that those tags also "might" come in for some extra weight, but statistically I've never seen this established.