What if your content is way better than competitors?

[Charlessipe]

Do you have any suggestions if you are being outranked by competitors even though your page has way better content and better links?

[EGOL]

I hope not.  If you try it let us know how it works.  I think that they should give a bonus for anything that is "kickass". 

[cbielich]

You think Google would penalize for using the word "kickass"?

[AWCthreads]

The German in me favors free beer - especially Sam Adams.

If you don't have a brand to leverage (and even if you do) use value propositions and calls to action.

I don't know if our brands are famous or not, but we're 2nd and 3rd generation family brands and we leverage the name for all its worth. Plus, our name offers connotations that our url does not.

Now we're not just in-state but nationwide. Makes us feel good when a customer from Wisconsin sent us this yesterday:

"I am truly impressed with your services. I will be ordering more items very soon. I will be also be suggesting your site to my horse community. Thank you for communicating so well! "

Hopefully, his horse friends won't think he's crazy for referring them to a lumber.com site.

[EGOL]

I almost never place the brand in the title tag.  Because my brands are not FamousBrands.  Instead I offer a value proposition like "free beer"... which one would you click?

[EGOL]

I place the main keywords on the left and the kickass price on the right.

[AWCthreads]

While waiting for EGOL, I'll throw this in. I've wondered the same thing as you and have a hard time using that Title real estate for much other than keywords and brand.

So I compromise and put the promo language at the front of my meta descriptions in CAPITAL LETTERS.

[AWCthreads]

Mighty Mouse uses more than free beer to steal peanuts! Great tidbits!

Charles - to your point I give a thumbs up to EGOL's post.

I have compared the sites of competitors outranking us and and often times I cannot find a single common thread among them as to why they are ranking so well except for strong PA/DA.

Their site appearance, layout, navigation, user friendliness, promotions and depth of content may not be that great, but they're pulling rank.

If your PA/DA is comparable, then you've got underlying issues.

[webestate]

Do you typically put those type of titles in the beginning of the title tag or end?  From what I have been told and read "best practice" is to have your best keywords in the beginning of the title tags, however they also say the title tag should have a call to action of some sort.

However who knows these days

[EGOL]

When I am at #2 and the publisher is #1, placing a kickass price (lower than MSRP) in the title tag pulls in a lot of their sales.

"Fast Shipping" does well in B2B.

"Video" does well in informatinoal.

A huge number works well in some product and info pages.... "350 Brass Widgets"

[AWCthreads]

"Free Beer" is very compelling. How's your conversion rate on those titles?

[EGOL]

If your content is way better and you have better links (and a few months have passed) then these sites are probably beating you on their authority or your site has a lack of respect from Google.

If the sites above me are enormously authoritative then I tweak my title tags with something like.... "Free Beer!"... or a kickass price....  use your imagination.  The goal is to elicit clickthroughs in the SERPs.

If they are not enormously authoritative then I would be wondering if I have a problem that is holding my site back... such as bad links, duplicate content, etc.   If that is not true then you can wait or promote the page.