SEO: Title Tag

Stationery-Direct

Free Member
Jul 12, 2005
1,305
124
I have always thought that you should never use a keyword in your title tag, description tag and keyword tag more than 3 times, I thought google and the other search engines penalised for this sort of thing.

However, on researching a few things I have noticed a lot of websites that are at the top of google listings for certain words have them displayed in the title tag and description tag many times, for example:

A search for "NCR Pads"

Placed No 1 - Description:
We offer 2-part ncr pads, 3-part ncr pads, 4-part ncr pads and 5-part ncr pads. Free designing and carriage.

Placed No 4 - Title:
NCR Printing: NCR sets, NCR pads and NCR books from the business ...

As you can see there is repetition more than 3 times and they are highly placed.

Can anybody enlighten me on this?, many thanks.

Damon
 
V

vengavenga

Everyone has different ideas about this, but our experience shows that title tags are a lot less important that they used to be, in the same way as other metatags have much less importance placed on them nowadays.

The search engines want to provide their users with accurate, relevant search results and the best way of doing that it to look at page content over and above everything else.

The page itself mentions NCR pads several times and there's no doubt whatsover that the page is about NCR pads and nothing else.

Ali.
 
Upvote 0

quikshop

Free Member
Oct 11, 2006
3,644
714
54
Wolves
Hi Damon,

Take a look at my friend's internet shop and the title he uses: http://www.paragonmartialarts.co.uk/. I think Google place a lot of weight on relevancy, so if what you have in your title and meta tags is repeated or resembles the text you have in your web page, thats a big plus.

On your web page, try to keep your keyword density to a conversation level, doing 3 paragraphs worth of NCR NCR NCR NCR NCR will guarantee a big hairy Google boot off their listings :D

Regards,
Dave

www.internetretailer.biz
 
Upvote 0
Wow!!!!!

Title elements are they are correctly called ARE ONE OF THE MOST IMPORTANT ELEMENTS FOR BETTER VISIBILITY IN GOOGLE AT LEAST!

http://www.seomoz.org/article/search-ranking-factors

A good title tag could be the difference between first and 11th, or 100th.

It needs to be unique on every page.

If you want to rank for something, put it in your title tag, then get links to that page with the keywords in the links. Then mention the keyword phrase in the text of the page a couple of times, and ensure your internal navigation points to that page with the keywords in the url. :)
 
Upvote 0
Wow!!!!!

Title elements are they are correctly called ARE ONE OF THE MOST IMPORTANT ELEMENTS FOR BETTER VISIBILITY IN GOOGLE AT LEAST!

http://www.seomoz.org/article/search-ranking-factors

A good title tag could be the difference between first and 11th, or 100th.

It needs to be unique on every page.

If you want to rank for something, put it in your title tag, then get links to that page with the keywords in the links. Then mention the keyword phrase in the text of the page a couple of times, and ensure your internal navigation points to that page with the keywords in the url. :)

Agree 100% saying meta tags are not important to SEO is like saying petrol is not important to your car :D
 
Upvote 0
Agreed. But how many people other than webmasters actually read this element (apart from in search engines).

A good rule of thumb is don't repeat your keyword more than twice, in my experience. If you are adding more and youre still not getting results, you need to reevaluate your page text or get some more quality links from your "neighbourhood".

ie - If you have a flower shop get links from Flower forums, flower blogs, flower photography sites etc. :)
 
Upvote 0
Ray There's spam and there's SPAM.;)

What do you consider spam?

It comes in a tin and makes a nice sandwich?

The point is a spammy title is tolerated if there is little else to serve up as a result - but is poor parctice. If you are going after "NCR" sets then a well sculpted page and tags is easy to get well ranked.

I doubt if many people younger than 40 know what NCR sets are!
 
Upvote 0

mattk

Free Member
Dec 5, 2005
2,579
974
50
Swindon
NCR pads and sets are not remotely competitive terms.

I suspect the more competitive the term, the less a spammy title is tolerated, and will quickly start to work against you.
Agreed. This is not a competitive phrase, so the top ranking pages are unlikely to be the creme de la creme of optimisation.

If you want to see good page structure then look at the top 10 results for a very competitive term.
 
Upvote 0

Latest Articles

Join UK Business Forums for free business advice