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I'm wondering if this is a bad idea. It's great for company name recognition, because it always shows up in the SERPS. But is it bad for search rankings?
Ie, our titles currently look like:
<title>SiteName - Keyword1 Keyword2 Keyword3</title>
would it better to have SiteName at the end...
<title>Keyword1 Keyword2 Keyword3 - SiteName </title>
or no sitename at all in the title...
<title>Keyword1 Keyword2 Keyword3</title>
Thoughts?
WebmasterWorld take in a shed of terms across a large amount of topics. Look at those titles, nowhere does it say WebmasterWorld. Take this thread, when it is titled what you called it. Good titles that are on topic to the page will serve you well.
1) Branding. Get the name in the tag, IF the company name is, or could become, a strong brand, and attract typeins, and / or searches specifically for the company name. If not, then don't
2) <title>. I might be tempted to put 1 or 2 non-optimal keywords first. Keep a beady eye on some of those competetive SERPs
>> <title>SiteName - Keyword1 Keyword2 Keyword3</title>
Thats the one I'd pick, or <title>SiteName filler1 kword1 kword2 kword3</title>, something like that
Are people going to search for you by name, when the name is your url?
If they have never heard of you which is more likey, your name/url in the <title> is wasted.
>> Depends if they are looking for you or your products.
It happens more than you would suppose. I have some clients who are leaders in their respective fields, and they DO get significant traffic on the company name. Sometimes, the company can become almost synonymous with the product
hoover = vacuum cleaner
Coke = any cola
Google = search....
I was looking for a Virgin once and got a man with a beard instead ...strange? :)
UNLESS Fred Smith is a well-known brand within the nuts and bolts buying community. Just because they aren't a brand known worldwide, or very generally, that doesn't mean that the brand doesn't have value.
Lets say Company A sells garden gnomes. Acme Garden Gnomes Ltd. As a member of the public, I've never heard of them. If I was a landscape gardener, I might have heard of them, because some people *like* gnomes in their garden, though I know not why, so I would have had to buy them in a few times, and Acme are the biggest suppliers. Fine, the Acme brand has value in that segment then
If AGG wants to sell gnomes, targetting landscape gardeners would be a good strategy, because that is a pretargetted group with a relatively high demand for the product. So, I'd have 2 sites, acmegardengnomes.com for "trade" sales, focussed on shifting the deluxe, premium gnomes. It probably won't rank for "cheap gnomes", but I don't care, because that's not its target market.
Also, I'd have buy-gnomes-online.com going for retail type traffic - but I'd put the Acme name in the titles, to build awareness of our brand, so when the entry level gnome buyer wants to upgrade to a gnome with a fishing rod, hopefully they'll remember the Acme name.
The point I'm trying to make is that brands can have value in their own niche, without impacting greatly on the outside world. Don't dismiss the value of the company name search - anyone who knows a company name, and bothers to search for it is probably about halfway sold before they even arrive at the site. Thats valuable traffic in my book
There should be at least one page that is targeted to your company name, the rest of the pages need not target your name in some cases. If your name was short (acronym of some sort) theen it might work well. I do see what you mean, I would just be worried about removing the focus of each of the 79,999 pages.
Chances are as well you are going to have a footer or some text on each and every page that will picked up by the search engines.
Point 2, msg #4. Think about it
Some people may forget the domain name, indeed it may not exactly be the company name. So put the company name in the title but after any important keywords. Also make sure the company name is in text within the body of the web page. If the name is featured in an image, make sure that the ALT includes the company name. Some people may prefer to use the Google toolbar to find web pages. If they type the company name in the Search field, it is then highly likely that your company will come to the top of the list.
This also points to the need to have a company name that is Internet friendly. Accents, hyphens or peculiar symbols can cause real problems. <snip>
Barry Welford
[edited by: msgraph at 1:40 pm (utc) on July 4, 2003]
[edit reason] no promotional urls please [/edit]
Well, the point I wanted to make here is that the web is a hard place to build up a brand. Coca Cola is already an established brand and has name recognition through traditional advertising efforts.
If you want to include your company name in the title element do so - but give priority to the keywords. I do as Tall Troll suggested but I reverse it. My keywords are first and then I follow with the company name.
Hm.... this leads me to starting another thread.
Maybe we'll try a test where we put the company name on some pages, but not others (with similar content). The idea is that
Let you know how it goes...
Analyze your competetion for top 10 for particular phrase. If all have Keywords in the title then I would include my Company name in title (in beginning or End depends on more research). The fact that my title looks different from others will help me attract eyeballs and probably clickthroughs. Again for some queries you might you might not include Brand name. It all comes down to research and Being different than others in SERPS. HTH :)
