Will Changing your title help get better rankings.

Website dropping in ranking on google

[JoeHouse]

Hello all

Question? Will changing my website's title help get my website back to the top of search engine ranking on google?

Just a few short months ago I had a very competitive keyword
at number 5 on google. In just a matter of a few short weeks it went from 5 to 11 and I fear it will keep on falling if I don't do anything to try and stop this. It's like google just fell out of love with my website or something.

Any advise anyone can give me would be appreciated. Thanks!

[martinibuster]

This question is a bit broad.

Changing your title tag can do wonders, but if you are asking this question in the first place, I suspect then that you are unsure about what you are doing.

If you are unsure of even the basic principles, I would suggest you make yourself some coffee, tea, or cocktails and settle down for a read through the WW library to at least get a foundation level of knowledge.

Tweaking the title tags without really understanding the "what and the why" you are doing isn't going to get you far.

[jimbeetle]

As you do your reading also keep in mind that the web is not static, competing sites are always tinkering with their pages.

After you've found out more than you've ever wanted to know about SEO by reading through the WW library then give a good hard look at your competition and check their strenghts and weaknesses against yours.

(And don't just stay in the Google forum, there's tons of good stuff in the Search Engine Promotion [webmasterworld.com] and SEM Research [webmasterworld.com] forums.)

Have a very productive weekend.

[166geary]

Hey there,

In my experience, titles are generally weighed more heavily than meta tags.

You should look into doing some keyword research before changing the title and also make sure these keywords are found in your copy too, when possible.

[Arnett]

Yes,text matters. It's important in position and also in prominence in different areas of your page. Google has 4 comands that will help you.

AllInText:search phrase
AllInTitle:search phrase
AllInAnchor:search phrase
AllInUrl:search phrase

These commands will show the rank of pages with the search phrase in the Text,Title,Inbound Link Anchor Text and URL. Top sites will rank highly for all 4. Build your site around the results of these commands and emulate the sites with the top results.

[jbinbpt]

From the post, I gather that you didn't change anything and you dropped in the serps.
If you did change something then you now know what not to do. Change it back.
If you didn't change anything, then you need to. It's my understanding the spiders look for fresh material. If they don't find fresh material, then you don't need to be spidered again. Adding content is the best way to do this, Add some pages, make note of it on the index page, add a link directly to it on the index page. That will help.
As a regular exercise, you should revisit your titles and tags to see if they are still revelent.

[Cossack]

Do not trust amateurs, use:

allinurl:
allinanchor:
allintext:
allintitle:

[martinibuster]

use:
allinurl:
allinanchor:
allintext:
allintitle:

There is nothing secret or deep about the advanced operators [google.com].

However, their primary function is for searching within a limited set of criteria- their connection to the serps is very thin to the point of irrelevance.

That's why you hear many people complaining that they're number one for the advanced operators but invisible in the serps.

Recipes are good for baking cakes. Road maps are great for getting from here to there. But there are no shortcuts, road maps, or recipes to follow if crafting a successful website is your goal.

If you are having trouble understanding the basics, there are only two options: Settle down and do your research to build a good foundation of understanding about the why and the what.

Or save yourself the aggravation and hire someone to do it right the first time.