page titles & key words

Do they invite the searcher in?

[annej]

The old timers here already know better but as a newbie I found myself writing awkward titles in order to get my important keywords in.The result was long and dull.

Now I know that Google only shows about 60 characters and it occurred to me that as long as I had significant keywords to get listed on the first search page perhaps it is more important that the title is inviting enough to entice the searcher to visit my site. So I have redone my main pages with titles that do have 2 or 3 key words but also hopefully will catch the eye so people will click on the link to my sites.

I guess it will be a month or two before I know if this worked. I'll report back then.

Anne

[2_much]

AnneJ that's the way to go. I've had the most success using the technique you've described.

One thing I've noticed is that for less competitive words, you can give your page a longer title and it'll help Google find your page. For more competitive keywords I think it's ideal to have a short title with your keyword once and inviting to the user.

[RossWal]

Good point annej. I wonder whether simple connector words (e.g to, the, a, for) have a diluting effect when included in the title. If I were a google algorithm I think I'd ignore those. Then again, if I were a google algorithm I think I'd ignore punctuation, but I think I've read on this board that punctuation in the title can be detrimental. So I guess I wouldn't make a very good google algorithm after all :(

[digitalghost]

>>but also hopefully will catch the eye so people will click on the link to my sites.

Good practice. Titles in the serps do influence clickability. For sites that sell products, I try to get the price in the description as well. People seem to like seeing the price and those pages get more clicks and the conversion rate is slightly higher.

Dull titles and descriptions don't invite people to click. The SERP listing is pretty limited real estate but some of the most influential real estate the site can receive.

[annej]

>>but I think I've read on this board that punctuation in the title can be detrimental<<

It's a challenge to figure out if some of the things we read on these boards are absolute truth or someone's speculation.

I've decided on a compromise in which I use as few connector words as possible but do use them if other wise the title looks awkward and contrived.

I have a question on punctuation. Sometimes I need something to separate two parts of the title. Is it better to have

Widgets: Red Yellow and Blue Widgeting
or
Widgets - Red Yellow and Blue Widgeting

It sounds like it may be ideal to avoid punctuation altogether but I don't think I can do that and still have the titles make sense.

Anne

[digitalghost]

I would use Widgets ¦ Red Yellow and Blue Widgeting, or course Brett's forum software changes the character I use, but I don't like hyphens or semicolons in my titles.

However, if I were actually creating the pages, I would create three of them.

Red Widgeting
Yellow Widgeting
Blue Widgeting

This eliminates the need for any hyphens and expands the coverage to three phrases which can be easily optimized for.

[annej]

digitalghost, Do you use the & # code for your replacement for : or -?

I'm curious about the information on Google not liking punctuation in titles. Why would they care?

Thanks everyone for the support.

Anne

[Marcia]

Anne, there's a limited amount that's absolute fact, and certain things can change over time. The advantage of open dialog is that we get a variety of opinions and some may be more suitable for our situation or more to our taste than others.

Some people repeat the keyword in the title, some don't. And choosing can depend on how competitive the keywords are. With more competitive ones, it may pay to limit to only one phrase per page; however, sometimes a page can rank for several phrases, especially in less competitive areas and where the phrases might be a little longer - or more targeted. Sometimes it's very important to have the exact phrase in the title, other times a page can rank with only one of the words in the title - or none.

I don't personally use special characters, I stay with the keyboard characters, and I do use hyphens. For some search engines longer titles are fine, with Google around 8 to 10 words seems to be workable, more like 8 or 9 depending on length and number of characters, watching where it may truncate.

Using the widgets example, there can be a choice between the singular and plural. And different forms of the word, depending on whether we're dealing with stemming, which is not the case with Google at this time.

You could have:

Widgets - the History of Widgets
History of Widgets, Early American Widget Design
Widgeting History - Renaissance to Early America

There are innumerable combinations possible, but choosing the keyword set for the PAGE is what comes first. For more competitive they could be more limited with additional pages added, with the title reflecting the scope and limit of the page itself. All put together, the pages should be cohesive, working into the site's theme, so it's best to have as many page variations as possible, with the titles representing the individual pages themselves.

Here are a few previous discussions on page titles that go into different aspects of using keywords in page titles:

Repeated keywords in page title [webmasterworld.com]
Length & keyword density of titles [webmasterworld.com]
Best page title style [webmasterworld.com]