25 replies to this topic

[mopacfan]

Greetings everyone,

An seo firm has given us some specific recommendations for the title, description and keywords meta tags for our new site. I'd like to get your opinions on these recommendations. Our new site is not yet live but the tags have been modified per the recommendations.

They are very descriptive, but also, very long. What do you think, are the just right, too long, or way too long?

I appreciate your comments.

[Jill]

Hey Michael,

My personal choice for Title tags is to remove all extranneous words like "your clear choice." That will simply confuse the spiders as to what your page is truly about.

To me, the Title tag is such important real estate that it shouldn't have any "wasted" words in it.

Length is not as important (to me) as having only the targeted keyword phrases contained within it.

Jill

[fred]

Hi

I'm with Jill on

My personal choice for Title tags is to remove all extranneous words like "your clear choice." That will simply confuse the spiders as to what your page is truly about.

but for a number I like to keep the title within 10 words , being keywords.

Also don't put your company name at the beginning it will reduce the weight of your keywords in the title , put your company name at the end.

[qwerty]

I think it's also important that your most important words are at the beginning of the tag, and that depends a lot on whether your main thrust is to brand the company name or get it to rank well on searches for its products.

I'd personally recommend changing "Cleartec Packaging is your clear choice for plastic packaging tubes and plastic containers" to something like "Plastic packaging tubes, plastic containers". If the company name is important, I'd tack on " - Cleartec Packaging" at the end.

I'm sure a lot of people disagree with that strategy, though.

[added] I see Fred beat me to it. I'm with him.

[SearchRank]

I agree with you qwerty (and fred) - put the company name at end so it looks something like this:

"Plastic Packaging Tubes and Containers - Cleartec Packaging"

As for the meta description tag, may I recommend ...

"Offering plastic packaging tubes and containers that can be used for a variety of applications. Our clear packaging system is a cost effective, high impact way to increase your products’ sales."

This is of course considering that your top two keyword phrases are "plastic packaging tubes" and "plastic containers".

Good luck.

[dragonlady7]

Use "Cleartec Packaging is your clear choice" etc. etc. for the first paragraph. That's what it is-- the first paragraph. It's a nice clear welcome that's catchy etc. and explains what you do fairly concisely and attractively. BUT. Before it, the title tag and the on-screen page title (the heading) should have only important words like Plastic Packaging Tubes etc.
The Title is not a place to write an essay, it's a place to make sure people know what your page is about. Not who you are or why you do what you do or why they should choose you-- just what you do, so they know if you do what they're looking for.

[Tom Philo]

If a title is too long then you cannot copy bookmarks correctly with most backup programs. Since NT/XP/98 limit name length to 255 characters your backup program will choke (either abort, or if a good program, ask you to rename) the URL to something shorter than 254 characters (EOF marker uses one character.)

I copy my favorites between systems to keep them in sync (using packet writing to a CDRW disk) and this occurs all the time. I would limit it from 80 to at most 120 characters for the title. Just about the width of a standard piece of paper so if people print out their favorites it is all on one line.

As for putting the company name at the end -- it means all bookmarks relating to that company are scattered when searched for in the favorites -- which is nothing more than a file folder. If the name is in the front then they can be sorted and organized for the end user to find easily. Plus it makes it easy for them to see and follow your site organization if they have multiple bookmarks for you.

This gets down to how your customers (and people in general) organize items. Do people organize by topic or company? Most people organize by topic and then they go to specific companies to find items. Thus they go to favorities and go to a folder for that topic then pick a company (site) to go find the product. So I susggest you put the company name first then description afterward.

[SearchRank]

Regard taphilo's reply on "Bookmarks" I would have to disagree with you. In search engine marketing, one is marketing for the search engines so people can find the site, not so that one can bookmark or "Add To Favorites". Always when I add a site to my favorites I will create my own title. I am not at all concerned with what displays there by default.

If one is that concerned over people bookmarking their site, they can use a JavaScript and a button on their site that will allow one to bookmark the site and have a default title for the bookmark.

Here is the script:

<script language="javascript">
if (top != self) {
top.location = location
}
function addFav(){
if (navigator.appName.indexOf("Microsoft") != -1 && parseInt(navigator.appVersion.charAt(0)) >= 4 && navigator.appVersion.indexOf("Win") != -1){
window.external.AddFavorite('http://www.domain.com/' 'Title of Bookmark Here')
}
else{
var newWin = window.open("","newWindow", "width=200,height=120")
var newContent = '<html><head><title>Add to Favs</title></head><body bgcolor="#FFCC00" link="#CC3399"><center><font face="arial" size=4><b>Close this window then Press Ctrl + D<br><br><a href="java script:window.close()">OK</a></b></font></center></body></html>'
newWin.document.write(newContent)
newWin.document.close()

}
}
</script>

And then the hyperlink for the button or text link:

java script:addFav()

But you can't worry about how you want the default title for the bookmark to be if you want to have an effective search engine marketing campaign.

[Searchaware]

mopacfan

I agree with the comments made by others regarding title length and structure.

I note the description tag is the same as the first paragraph of the main text - I am not sure that this is necessarily the best way to go. I would have thought you would want to get those primary phrases from your title into your description tag as well.

Simon

[Webnauts]

I have two links here, which I guess would help you out.

Free Crash Course On The Basics Of Search Engine Optimization & How To Submit To Search Engines
http://www.1hour-sea...timization.com/

Designing a High Search Engine Rankings Page:
http://www.searcheng...m/tips/doit.htm

I would be glad to hear your comments about them.

[compar]

I have two links here, which I guess would help you out. 

Free Crash Course On The Basics Of Search Engine Optimization & How To Submit To Search Engines
http://www.1hour-sea...timization.com/

Designing a High Search Engine Rankings Page:
http://www.searcheng...m/tips/doit.htm

I would be glad to hear your comments about them.

The 1hour page would not load for me. Is the URL correct?

In a discussion of titles, which is what this thread was originally about. I would guess that 1hour prime keyword phrase is "Search Engine Optimization". If that is correct then I think he has it too far from the beginning of the title. I don't think anybody is going to search on "Free Crash Course On The Basics Of". So I think his title would be better if it was written something like this "Search Engine Optimization: A free crash course."

If he is trying to get two keyword phrase into the title -- the second being "How To Submit To Search Engines" then I would have written the tile this way "Search Engine Optimization & How To Submit To Search Engines: A free crash course.

In the case of searchworld here are my thoughts. It is interesting if you read his content that he comments on his title and admits it is "may not be perfect". I agree with him. His keyword phrase or phrases are probably "High Search Engine Rankings" and "Search Engine Rankings". Although in his first line of text he also throws in "search engine placement".

So I think a better title might have been: "High Search Engine Rankings: How to design your page." That's still not perfect but I think it is better.

[Jill]

I kinda think we have enough experts here that can provide the same (or better) advice as those resources.

Just a thought...

Jill

[Webnauts]

I kinda think we have enough experts here that can provide the same (or better) advice as those resources. 

Just a thought...

Jill

Sorry Jill!

I just posted the above resources intending to help.
If is is unusual or not wished here to post resources of other SEO organizations, I will avoid in the future doing so. I just wanted to help...

[awall19]

Another good technique to use in the title is to overlap keyword phrases when possible. For example, you can capture both "navy nuclear" and "nuclear power" using the phrase "navy nuclear power."

[Jill]

If is is unusual or not wished here to post resources of other SEO organizations, I will avoid in the future doing so.

No, it's not a problem, which is why I didn't delete them.

It's just that there are hundreds of thousands of SEO resources out there that are not very good, in my opinion. Which is the a big reason why we have this forum, and why I have my newsletter.

The resources you posted might be very good, and I'm sure if you posted them you feel that they are. Unfortuantely, I don't have the time to check out every resource that is posted, so I like to warn people to be careful.

If one of our moderators says something about SEO, you can generally believe it is good advice. That's why they've been chosen to be moderators here. Any outside resource needs to be carefully evaluated, and some research done on the authors to ensure that they actually know what they're talking about. Most likely they do, but as I said, there's much more bad SEO advice out there than good. And I've read lots of it. There are very few things that I read that I agree with 100% for whatever reason. Doesn't mean I'm right and they're wrong, but it just means you have to take everything you read with a grain of salt unless you know and trust the person who wrote it.

Jill