For quiet some time now I was trying to figure out whether or not it is a good idea to use title tags to brand my blog. There is agreement in SEO community on the importance of keywords in the title for the purposes of better ranking. The question is with how many keywords are you going to “stuff” your title with? Reading SEO Company‘s announcement about upcoming Title Optimization Plugin, helped me to answer this question. I do not care that much about their upcoming plugin, with the exception of one feature – the subtitle. Google has ignored keywords meta tag along with the description one for quiet some time now, it is only the matter of time when the rest of search engines will do the same.
Anyway going back to “title optimization”. My logic behind “stuffing” the title tag of my blog was in hopes to rank for more keywords. But I think it all comes down to being logical. Here is an example. This present post will have following text in the title: “Title Optimization: Should You Use Title To Brand Your Blog? | My Affiliate Journey – Affiliate Marketing Blog by Vlad”. In one shot I am trying to rank for “title optimization”, “affiliate marketing”, and even “Vlad” (an attempt to beat the “Impaler”). The problem with the way title tags are being used on this blog is that it repeats certain keywords for every post I write.
I would rather have visitors finding this post when they search for “Title Optimization” rater than any other keyword in the title of this post.
Being far from a SEO expert I decided to check check out and see how other bloggers use the title tags and hopefully make my decision based on what I find there. So I just stopped quickly at Problogger and Niche Marketing by Andy Beard to see how title tags are structured on these two blogs.
Not too my surprise the implementation was different on each blog. While I currently am implementing title plugin similar to that used by Andy Beard, I think I may go with the solution similar to that used by Darren.
I know that there is a good chance that Andy will stop by and offer his insight on the issue. But every one is welcomed to enlighten me on this.
I like to do both, how you're pretty much doing in this post/others.
Keyword Keyword Keyword Keyword Keyword – Mysite.com
Something like that so you can have the keywords you're targetting and the branding.
I like to do both, how you’re pretty much doing in this post/others.
Keyword Keyword Keyword Keyword Keyword – Mysite.com
Something like that so you can have the keywords you’re targetting and the branding.
I am not so sure anymore what is better. I think I begin to believe using titles of single posts to brand my blog(s) my not be such a good idea and may dilute attempt to rank for a specific term. But then….. what do I know? Thank for stopping by!
Hey Vlad,
looks like we opted for the same structure for our titles, though I used pure theme code to get mine as opposed to a plugin. I'm moving toward a philosophy of more theme functionality when it will work as opposed to a plugin that does the same thing.
Here is the post I made at my blog with the actual theme based code I'm using for title tags, and for the h1 header on the site as well (wrapped in an h1 instead of a title, obviously). Incidentally this code handles categories, the home page, single posts, page pages and UTW tag pages all without any extra work on your part.
Get A Better WordPress Title In 30 Seconds!
I am not so sure anymore what is better. I think I begin to believe using titles of single posts to brand my blog(s) my not be such a good idea and may dilute attempt to rank for a specific term. But then….. what do I know? Thank for stopping by!
Hey Vlad,
looks like we opted for the same structure for our titles, though I used pure theme code to get mine as opposed to a plugin. I’m moving toward a philosophy of more theme functionality when it will work as opposed to a plugin that does the same thing.
Here is the post I made at my blog with the actual theme based code I’m using for title tags, and for the h1 header on the site as well (wrapped in an h1 instead of a title, obviously). Incidentally this code handles categories, the home page, single posts, page pages and UTW tag pages all without any extra work on your part.
Get A Better WordPress Title In 30 Seconds!
Dane thanks for stopping by. I noticed that theres is code to use UTW in your code but did not see actually “action”- I did not notice any tags in your title.
Dane thanks for stopping by. I noticed that theres is code to use UTW in your code but did not see actually “action”- I did not notice any tags in your title.
I actually tried what you are suggesting there, but I use too many tags to make that workable.
What the UTW section in my code actually does is display the current tag set as the title on the UTW tag pages.
Hey Vlad,
did you stumble my title post?
I actually tried what you are suggesting there, but I use too many tags to make that workable.
What the UTW section in my code actually does is display the current tag set as the title on the UTW tag pages.
@Dane,
Yes I did. Are you getting any hits?
Hey Vlad,
did you stumble my title post?
@Dane,
Yes I did. Are you getting any hits?
Yeah, I agree with you. You don't want to target too much on every page. I've been picking one keyword per page for both my Mortgage Info Blog and my company's website (linked above). One keyword per page/post is enough. Then what you end up doing is, with every new post, you're creating another subcategory to rank for. Just my two cents an I'm a noob, but it seems to be working pretty darn good for me so far.
Yeah, I agree with you. You don’t want to target too much on every page. I’ve been picking one keyword per page for both my Mortgage Info Blog and my company’s website (linked above). One keyword per page/post is enough. Then what you end up doing is, with every new post, you’re creating another subcategory to rank for. Just my two cents an I’m a noob, but it seems to be working pretty darn good for me so far.
In my person experience with SEO, off-site optimization and general content is what's most important. Like you said, Google has been ignoring the keyword meta tags and descriptions, it is a plus but not completely necessary. As long as the content doesn't clash with the terms you're SEO'ing your site for then it shouldn't be a big deal.
In my person experience with SEO, off-site optimization and general content is what’s most important. Like you said, Google has been ignoring the keyword meta tags and descriptions, it is a plus but not completely necessary. As long as the content doesn’t clash with the terms you’re SEO’ing your site for then it shouldn’t be a big deal.
Your title tag is perfect her – 10 words. Any more than 10 gets spammy. The other thing you've got perfectly right is to use exactly the same text in your h1 tag – beautiful!