Keyword Density, For Title Tags Options

[IwannalearnSEO]

Hello! My husband and I run a business selling toys, and have had a (successful) website for 4 years now. (uh, I think. Time flies)

I'm the official web person. You'll have to excuse me, because I don't know the correct phrases and such. (IMG:http://www.highrankings.com/forum/style_emoticons/default/unsure.gif)

What brought me here is a question I had. We rank pretty higly on google for MANY of our pages. But I'm always fooling around with it more, tweaking this and that.

Today I started wondering if keyword density in the title tag affects google ratings. Anyone know the answer? I fill up the titles which 65 or so characters full of keywords, but I was wondering if it would be BETTER for a specific keyphrase to put ONLY that keyphrase into the <TITLE>.

Anyone know?

And would the same apply for text links?

Jennifer

[IwannalearnSEO]

I've been looking around the forum more and came across the keyword density threads.

So maybe I used the wrong phrase.

Still wondering if there is a bennefit to having just the keyphrase you're targeting in the title tag and link text?

[Randy]

Welcome Jennifer ! (IMG:http://www.highrankings.com/forum/style_emoticons/default/hi.gif)

You'll definitely want to target the phrases you've optimizing each page for in the Title tag. This doesn't mean to the exclusion of everything else, such as your business name or whatever.

However the title should give a clear indication as to what each page is about, for both the search engines and real visitors.

[IwannalearnSEO]

I have a page for "Playhouses". The page has been in existance for quite some time. (3 years?) I re-vamped it once in 2003, and am looking at it again now.

The title is <Playhouses, cardboard box houses making forts boxes play house
playhouse building indoor>

(which is not what most of my titles look like, BTW (IMG:http://www.highrankings.com/forum/style_emoticons/default/embarrassed.gif) )

We are only #29 for playhouses (generating only 5 actual hits this month)

"Playhouses" is a more popular keyword, and I was trying to think about how I could help it get a better ranking. I was wondering if getting rid of everything in the title but "Playhouses" would improve it?

Problem is, all of the other words mixed in there are putting us #1, 2, 3, 4, etc for a lot of obscure phrases. (this is where our sales are coming from right now.) Getting rid of the junk would get rid of those customers. (57 hits, 1 sale that I know of this past week)

That probably didn't make any sense. I'm just trying to figure out if getting rid of the "junk" would make the better keyword rank better? Or would it just loose all of our gauranteed sales. (IMG:http://www.highrankings.com/forum/style_emoticons/default/cry_smile.gif)

[Jill]

You really can't expect to rank highly for one word keywords like "playhouse." You should be instead focusing on the phrases related to those keywords such as "kid's playhouse" or "children's playhouse" or whatever the phrases are that people are using to look for playhouses.

Your Title tags should definitely refect the PHRASES you optimize your page for. I would never optimize a page for just one keyword phrase, so therefore, my titles would never have just one keyword phrase in them.

Other people do like to do just one phrase though. Personally, I just don't get that.

[Randy]

The thing to remember is that a lot of factors are taken into account when the engines decide where a given page is going to rank for a given search term. Is the page title one of those factors? Sure. But it is just one factor.

It's always been my opinion that a Title should do considerably more than simply list keyword phrases.

The title you choose is the First impression any potential customer gets about your site when they conduct a search on any of the engines. You only get one chance to make a good first impression, so use it wisely. In my book Titles are very important, and not just for ranking purposes.

What about the other on page factors? Are you effectively using the text on each page to target the phrases you're going after on that page? Forget about keyword density. It'll have you chasing a ghost. Write for your real visitors, so that they'll be encouraged to buy from you. That said, you should certainly use the phrases that you're trying to rank well for in the text on the page. That's natural.

Next, do you link from your home page and/or other pages to your interior pages using the most important phrases as part of the anchor text? I'm assuming the generic phrase you mentioned is very important to you, so are you using your internal links to help this page rank well? For instance (and I'm going to typo this purposely so this thread doesn't start competing for the phrases)...

Let's say that you were wanting to target 3 phrases on your "Plahouses" page, and hopefully be able to incorporate less competitive but similar phrases into the mix. In my example you want to shoot for the generic "plahouses" as well as the more specific "cardboard plahouses" and "inflatable plahouses" also. A link from your home page or even as part of your normal navigation that had anchor text saying "Cardboard & Inflatable Plahouses" would serve the purpose of targeting all three phrases, yet still read perfectly for your real visitors.

Since this is all being done on your own site, you control what both the link says and what the page says. So you can make sure that engines and visitors alike are getting a clear signal from you as to what this page is about.

What about off site links? Sure these are out of your control to some degree, but do you have or can you get any other sites linking directly to your Plahouses page using similar anchor text?

And this just scratches the surface of what you can do to target a phrase or series of similar phrases.

Yes Titles are important. Very important. However there are a lot of other things you can to support their importance with the search engines, while still making them both enticing and informative for your visitors.

Two things come to mind that you may find incredibly helpful here on the forums. First, if you haven't already you should probably research the keyword phrases you're targeting to sort out which are truly valuable and are also not so competitive as to be out of reach. The thread I'm thinking about is pinned here in the Keyword Research section of the forums.

Second, you may want to spend some time browsing through many of the threads in the Online Copywriting section. We have the good fortune of having some very skilled copywriters in our midst. Simply reading how they approach these issues will give you all sorts of ideas that you can use to your benefit.

[IwannalearnSEO]

Thank you for the replies. What I ended up doing was changing it to something much more readable <Playhouses: cardboard, inflatable, and build your own playhouse> while retaining the important keywords/phrases for that particuliar page.

Another page one step further into the site is where the other keywords/phrases went. It is more relevant to those specific words, and somehow I'd forgotten to set a title for that page. (IMG:http://www.highrankings.com/forum/style_emoticons/default/eek.gif) (Usually when I switch things around like that, the second page I'm trying to shift the stuff to absolutely refuses to rank well for Google, so we'll see. These phrases have little competition, so hopefully they will keep ranking well for the other page.)

I'll have to go on over and read up on copywriting.

[Jill]

<Playhouses: cardboard, inflatable, and build your own playhouse>

Personally, I'd say that's a very poor title because it's not using your keyword phrases together.

If you want to show up for "inflatable playhouses" then just saying inflatable without it saying "inflatable playhouses" isn't going to do you very much good.

[s-jeet-kumar]

I have a page for "Playhouses". The page has been in existance for quite some time. (3 years?) I re-vamped it once in 2003, and am looking at it again now.

The title is <Playhouses, cardboard box houses making forts boxes play house
playhouse building indoor>

(which is not what most of my titles look like, BTW (IMG:http://www.highrankings.com/forum/style_emoticons/default/embarrassed.gif) )

We are only #29 for playhouses (generating only 5 actual hits this month)

"Playhouses" is a more popular keyword, and I was trying to think about how I could help it get a better ranking. I was wondering if getting rid of everything in the title but "Playhouses" would improve it?

Problem is, all of the other words mixed in there are putting us #1, 2, 3, 4, etc for a lot of obscure phrases. (this is where our sales are coming from right now.) Getting rid of the junk would get rid of those customers. (57 hits, 1 sale that I know of this past week)

That probably didn't make any sense. I'm just trying to figure out if getting rid of the "junk" would make the better keyword rank better? Or would it just loose all of our gauranteed sales.    (IMG:http://www.highrankings.com/forum/style_emoticons/default/cry_smile.gif)

I hope I am not offending the seniors here but as randy pointed out TITLE is not the only factor in your rankings .
Especially in case of google , you should also consider the same phrase in your External links i.e the links pointing to you .

But obviously that is not the only factor again and you should also have a well written Page to convince google that it is really about "play houses ".

As Jill pointed , try to have two three phrases on the page example:
Cardboard play houses ,
kids play houses,
etc.

Each keyphrase still holds "play houses" and still different from the other .

Bye

[boozinGear]

Personally, I'd say that's a very poor title because it's not using your keyword phrases together.

If you want to show up for "inflatable playhouses" then just saying inflatable without it saying "inflatable playhouses" isn't going to do you very much good.

So, in my site for example, my products are sold by brand/product, I have recently adjusted my title tag from "BrandX products and Merchandise at mysite.com", to "BrandX CategoryAs, CategoryBs, and CategoryCs at mysite.com". Generally speaking, there are max 4 categories possible per brand (currently, this could increase as I gain more categories of products) - so the title shouldn't get too long. But, according to your advice here, should I change that to be "BrandX CategoryAs, BrandX CategoryBs, BrandX CategoryCs at mysite.com" or does that have the potential to get too long? I have this all dynamically generated on each brand's "main" page so that the title reflects exactly what products of that brand are going to be on that page.

What do you think would be best? And what is "too long" for a title tag (so I'll know where to draw the line as I grow)?

Thanks!

[Jill]

About 10 or 11 words is good. (IMO)

(IMG:http://www.highrankings.com/forum/style_emoticons/default/frog.gif)

[Michael Martinez]

We are only #29 for playhouses (generating only 5 actual hits this month)

"Playhouses" is a more popular keyword, and I was trying to think about how I could help it get a better ranking. I was wondering if getting rid of everything in the title but "Playhouses" would improve it?

Problem is, all of the other words mixed in there are putting us #1, 2, 3, 4, etc for a lot of obscure phrases. (this is where our sales are coming from right now.) Getting rid of the junk would get rid of those customers. (57 hits, 1 sale that I know of this past week)

You are selecting your targeted search expressions by the wrong criteria (and this is a very common mistake, one I myself used to make frequently). You're assuming that just because a lot of sites come up for "playhouses" that your target market is searching on that expression. However, you'll get a lot of cross-over with other types of playhouses.

You may do better to pursue expressions like "child playhouses", "cardboard playhouse", "childrens playhouse", and "kid playhouse". People are actually searching for these expressions and some similar/related expressions. It may be these searches reflect optimization checks. It's difficult to be sure since I don't know your market and the numbers I get for these searches, while not as extravagant as for some others, seem a little suspicious.

Looking at what other Web sites target in their title tags and inbound link anchor text won't tell you what people use to search for.

As you have noticed, people are actually searching for other expressions, and the best guide you have to what keyword expressions you should be optimizing for would be your server log data. Knowing what people search for tells you what you want to be found for.

Thank you for the replies. What I ended up doing was changing it to something much more readable <Playhouses: cardboard, inflatable, and build your own playhouse> while retaining the important keywords/phrases for that particuliar page.

I doubt that will be an effective change. You need to do more keyword research. I recommend you sign up with WordTracker, or check out the Google adsense and Yahoo!/Overture ad services. They offer tools that help you identify trends in search activity. A number of people here recommend KeywordDiscovery, but I haven't used it. I do use the Digital Point free Keywords Suggestion Tool a great deal.

I hope I am not offending the seniors here but as randy pointed out TITLE is not the only factor in your rankings .
Especially in case of google , you should also consider the same phrase in your External links i.e the links pointing to you .

Too many people emphasize link building without learning how to make their content work for them. The better your content is, the less link building you need to engage in. This particular problem, as described in the forum (I have not looked at the site), calls for specific on-page improvement before anything needs to be done with linkage.

And you want a mixture of phrases in your inbound links, just as you want a mixture of title tags on your site. There is no one magic phrase that will capture all the traffic or dominate all the rankings.

[iNetVentures]

I would have made it something like this:

Playhouses, cardboard box houses making forts boxes play house
playhouse building indoor>

Playhouses, cardboard box playhouses, making playhouse forts, box playhouses, building playhouses, indoor playhouses, etc

Plus it pays to check which gets more searches: playhouse or playhouses

An example: picnic basket or picnic baskets. One gets about 25 searches a day, the other gets 800+-

iNetVentures

[IwannalearnSEO]

I would have made it something like this:
Playhouses, cardboard box playhouses, making playhouse forts, box playhouses, building playhouses, indoor playhouses, etc
iNetVentures

Does it not penalize you to have a single word repeated too many times? I've always tried to keep it to 1 or two times in the title.

I don't know, it's just what I've read somewhere and I've never fooled around with it to verify.

So far no changes in the rankings.

[Jill]

Does it not penalize you to have a single word repeated too many times?

Not necessarily a penalty, but yeah, I wouldn't do it!