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Sorry I don't know much about the seemingly mysterious workings of google, rankings etc.
Comments appreciated.
Thanks
To learn about the workings of Google read though the Knowledge Base and the forum Library and you'll have a good grasp. Then follow along with discussions and you'll be up to speed in no time.
Widgets
Widgets - Buy your quality widgets here
Just wondering?
Virtually no difference at all. Just write what you think is best.
Which of the following titles would rank better?Widgets
Widgets - Buy your quality widgets here
Depends on the keywords you're targeting.
(Single Keyword) 'Widgets': The first one
(Double Keyword) 'Quality Widgets': The second one
I would leave 'Buy your' and 'here' out of the title.
It may help if you 're in a regional business to mention the region.
WidgetsWidgets - Buy your quality widgets here
For widgets? The second attempt would have a better chance if you were masochistic enough to target a single word.
Page title, although important, isn't everything though.
Pick a target area, and type some single words into Google. This will give you some insight into what works best (at the moment).
In reality, I wouldn't bother optimising for a single word ... even if the competition wasn't so fierce. Any traffic earned from this would most likely be poorly targeted.
Example:
Widgets - Red Widgets
This way, I am presumably optimizing for "widgets red" and "red widgets", with a total of only three words.
Can anyone tell me how the hyphen affects the search? Would the hyphen in the above example harm the page for the search term "widgets red"?
And I meant it!
The site above me uses the main keyword 'once' in his title (and not even at the beginning), and amazingly only once on his page.
He has recently totally re-designed his Index page - with no affect on his serps results whatsoever.
Inbound links are the key - he has some excellent ones!
Certainly place your keywords in the title, and on the page, but New-Google (it has certainly changed over the past 6 months) is far too sophisticated to worry about KW density, repetitions etc. I think they have gone back to their roots.
By the way 'Pedent' - you're not pedantic enough - it is spelt 'Pedant'
!
My edit: Although 'Pedent' hasn't posted in this particular thread, I've been thinking about it all day, and had to get it off my chest!
The site above me uses the main keyword 'once' in his title (and not even at the beginning), and amazingly only once on his page
Lightfoot ... sounds you are talking about one site here (perhaps for one search phrase even).
My observations are based on a portfolio of sites and hundreds of different SERPS.
Certainly place your keywords in the title, and on the page, but New-Google (it has certainly changed over the past 6 months) is far too sophisticated to worry about KW density, repetitions etc. I think they have gone back to their roots
Bottom line is that Google uses a mix of factors to decide relevance. On site stuff certainly matters ... I frequently hit page 1 for reasonably competitive terms with just 3 or 4 initial links. But there is no denying that link popularity helps for more competitive areas.
Having said this, I have one 2 month old site with a page (that just achieved a dizzying PR3) in position 10 out of 6 million results (Earlier today it was 11 million!).
Believe me, this has nothing to do with external links ;)
I come number two in .co.uk with UK filter on, but 30 in the main index. That is for single word, most other variations i'm number one in .co.uk.
I'm trying to achieve similar in the main index and have just changed title to the second variation instead of the first and wondered what the expert opinion was.
I am of course building links like crazy with the right anchor text.
The main reason for the question is that I have Web CEO on trial and it says you shouldn't have your keyword twice in a title
Seems to work just fine in the real world. Best plan is probably to try this approach on some pages, and try multiple keywords in titles for others. See which works best for your site.
