Changing a word in Title & Heading

Low traffic key word problem

[LaurieStrode]

I've had my site up for several years with not as much traffic as it should really have. One of the factors I'm looking at is the "keywords" - there are 3 words in the domain, title and heading and I realize the first word might be knocking down the traffic. Ex: Big-BlueWidgets.com. A recent keyword analyses showed very little searches for all three words as a phrase. However, just Blue Widgets shows a ton of searches.

Do you think it is worth taking a hit in my current traffic and PR by changing my title and heading by dropping the first word (not from the domain obviously)? Does anyone have experience with this? I appreciate any advice! Thank you.
PS - I've searched for this same topic to no avail. If this exact problem is already addressed, perhaps someone can point me to it.

[trader]

Yes, I would think it worth doing. You can also use both terms in the Title. Or nothing at all wrong with using 2 words instead of 3 in the Title. You can also use both the key phasess in the Description metatag and Content areas such as saying "get 'blue widgets' information at the 'big blue widgets' website" or whatever.

[leadegroot]

My experience is that 'big blue widgets' encompasses 'blue widgets', so targeting BBW also targets BW.
Is it possible you actually have an over-optimisation penalty?

there are 3 words in the domain, title and heading

Sometimes this is over optimisation if they are the same - try switching it around?

[ken_b]

Find a page for which you have rock solid stats now and try changing one thing title OR heading on that page and watch for a few weeks to see what the effect is.

I personally wouldn't experiment with my most popular pages. But the test page(s) need to have a solid stats history so you can make decent comparisons.

At the most, try this on a (relatively) few pages to start. If the site is 100 pages, try maybe 5. If the site is 200,000 pages start with a few hundred pages at the most.

Certainly don't do both on all pages at one time.

[LaurieStrode]

Thank you all for your help and replies.

leadegroot: I see what you mean about the repetitiveness of the words, somehow I thought that having the same keyword/phrase in your title, h1 and content, meant keeping it the exact same from Brett Tabke's 26 steps here.

Perhaps if, as suggested by trader, I make the title "Blue Widgets" or "blue widgets - big blue widgets" (unless that is spammy) and interchange the 3 words in description, text etc.

One other thing I noticed in a keyword evaluation I used is that many, many keywords were being picked up because I placed contents list of items available, under each side nav link. I've taken those out today!

Ken_b - thanks, I have a second stop page I can try the changes on and wait to see.

Thanks all. I'll let you know how it goes.