Small Site Title Tag / Structure Question

[PeterMurray]

Bit embarrassed to ask this question, but will ask it anyway!

I have done some quite reasonable basic SEO for clients in the south of Spain with small sites and had reasonable success. My wife and I came to the Pyrenees in the south of France to take over and run bed and breakfast in a lovely old farm and some self-catering accommodation in one of the pastures (with my continuing to do a bit of work for clients too). We are running and developing the place for friends who are away 3-4 years. They had an abysmal site, so we designed one to together: http:www.loubetaspyrenees.com/ (I have given the French version because it's what I am most concerned with - there is an English version in case I can tempt you to a holiday here!)

It's been very well received by users, so that's great. We have the place on about 12 agencies amd almost all link to our site, so it serves as a good showcase.

Here's my issue (for the French site): It went online 11th Feb and is already doing well for more "long tail" searches, and for more local and specific searches, but is proving slow on our prime search terms. The prime market is French, and they key terms are "Gîtes" for the self-catering accommodation, and "Chambres d'Hôtes" for the Bed and Breakfast. Our key Geographical term for the French market is "Hautes Pyrenees" - it's a departmental area.

In Google.fr We are around result 100 out of 600k results for "Chambres d'hôtes hautes pyrénées" and aren't in the first 200 for "Gîtes Hautes Pyrénées". This is a competitive market and we are competing with optimised and long-established agencies but still hope to do better.

I know I am losing from poorly constructed title tags cannibablising the results, but cannot see how to solve this:

Home Page Title tag: "Gîtes et Chambres d'Hôtes dans les Hautes Pyrénées | les Baronnies"

I have two main pages on the Gîtes:

Gîte for 2-3 people Title tag "Gîte dans les Hautes Pyrénées pour 2-3 personnes en les Baronnies"
Gîte for 3-9 people Title tag "Location Gîte dans les Baronnies Pyrénées pour groupe 3-9 personnes" ("Location" means rental)

Google understood the above and put us no 1 out of over 1miillion results for a search for a gite for 9 people in the south west of France ("gite sud ouest 9 personne")

And 2 pages for the Bed and Breakfast:

B&B in the farm building: "Chambres d'Hôtes dans les Hautes Pyrénées dans une ferme restaurée"
B&B in gite apartments with sitting rooms: "Chambres d'Hôtes dans les Hautes Pyrénées avec salon et terrasse"

I am not sure how to handle the titles for the Home Page and for the 4 subpages - sounds silly, but have you any advice on how I might handle these titles better? I thought of using more general terms on the Home Page ("Holiday accommodation in the ..."), but on such a small site (18 pages in each language version) I feel that would be unwise. It seems I must try to find some way of differentiating the titles on the other 4 pages so that i am not cannibalising but where there are so few alternatives I am not sure how!

Oh dear, sorry this was so long!

[itrogers]

No problem, thanks Peter

[PeterMurray]

Ian, thanks very much. I appreciate your response and clarification, and openness. And I agree with you, of course, about your approach - when in doubt ask what is the best way to optimise for users. Link-building is a must too - and I am doing it.

But I am left with a confusion about on-page optimisation - and it's specifically about very small businesses and very small sites: ours is and many of my clients' are (I don't have many clients but they rely on me heavily). I am doing another similar but slightly larger site at the moment and am concerned about similar issues. I am a PRO member and will ask a PRO question to see if they can provide any more light - it may well be the end advice will be the same of course, and, indeed, my own instinct is to go with yours but I need to relate the advice more clearly to those principles I described in my previous post, and at the moment I can't.

Thank you for putting up with my verbiage - I rambled far too much, I am sorry and appreciate your patience with that - it always means a confused mind! But as a a result of this discussion, I am now much clearer how to focus a more general question more succinctly.

Thank you for you help, and I wish you luck, too, Ian.

Peter

[itrogers]

Here's the thing-

The reason why I gave you that advice is because that is what I would do if I was in your position. I am not a staff member of SEOmoz and cannot endorse any golden way or method of SEO. I am simply a small business owner who has his own methods based on those general and specific principles and methods here at SEOmoz and other sources.

Whenever I am in doubt of what is the best way to optimize the site for search engines, I always fall back on asking myself in what is the best way to optimize the site for my users. Big influences - Rand Fishkin, Matt Cuts, all will tell you the same. I would focus your efforts on making your site the best possible experience for the user. Pick profitable keywords for your homepage, and other keywords for sub pages.

I honestly think that the big picture here is doing some good on page optimization and link building.

Also, you might want to consider getting enough mozpoints for a PRO question or signing up for SEOmoz PRO where you can ask questions directly to their staff if you are having some doubts. I use the pro Q&A and the SEOmoz staff is super helpful! They might give you another perspective as well. Or maybe they might chime in here? Best of luck to you Peter.

Ian

[PeterMurray]

I realise I am still struggling to understand SEO principles for small sites, and will probably post a more general question. Here's why I am struggling - I will use English search terms because the French terms may be confusing(!):

I have understood, rightly or wrongly, that a core principle of SEO is that you match pages to user intent and that uou don't mix different intents on the same page. And another is that you don't split the same demand between different pages (ie you don't cannibalise).

And I have always understood that general marketing principles tell us that we should target the market that will give us most net return for our marketing efforts/expenditure over a chosen timescale.

I can see clear examples about the principles for larger sites in SEOmoz (you are selling electronic products, you categorise from the most general to the most specific - the former matches general demand (I am looking for a vacuum cleaner) and the latter more specific demand (I am looking for a Bosch bagless vacuum cleaner).

OK! Now it seems to me you have told me to break these rules for my small site - you have told me to target two types of demand on the home page of my individual holiday accommodation site: self-catering (gîtes) and bed and breakfast holiday accommodation (chambres d'hôtes) - what you describe as "sweet spot keywords". The idea of "sweet spot keywords" seems to me to fly in the face of the above principles! I am not saying it's wrong in this case, but do you agree it does?

The principles I have described would seem to say my Home Page title should say something like "Holiday accommodation in the Central French Pyrenees". There are people who are open to both (self-catering and bed and breakfast) and do make these more general searches. I would then target the more specific demands, self-catering and bed and breakfast, on those other pages. And link-build appropriately to target all 3 (Home Page, B&B and Self-catering).

While that makes logical sense to me according to the principles, it frightens me! Because I feel on my small site the Home Page is too valuable to "throw away" on a a more general set of keywords that I know less about and less specifically address what I am offering. And it worries me because I only have a few pages on each of the two types of holiday accommodation on a site that cannot hope to earn a lot of domain strength. And, in similar vein, because it is plenty work to link-build for the Home Page let alone for the other 2!

Your advice, and your confirmation of my intuition re the sub pages, may well be right - but I want to know exactly why they are. Are you, are people on SEOmoz, saying people like me dealing with small sites should do something different from the principles I described?. Don't worry if you don't know, and I am not criticising you in any way - we are all learning here - but I would really like to know your views and others' views on applying these basic principles to small sites.

[PeterMurray]

Many thanks! Will do! peter

[itrogers]

I think youre intuition is right. For your subpages, like you said, focus on variants of your major keywords. These will usually be longer tail where you probably won't need as many links or a higher PR/mR to get significant rankings for these pages.

[PeterMurray]

Thanks, makes good sense to look deeper at their structures - I have been concentrating on their backlinks. Yes, I did quite a lot of research on what is actually being searched (mostly in Google Keyword Tool), but it would do no harm to revisit it.

However, I still want to be clearer about the principles for a situation like this - a small site, the two major demands/keywords on the Home Page. Should I be repeating those on the sub pages - I am at the moment and feel this is probably wrong. If not should I be looking for the variants of those key terms and be using those with my modifiers which reflect the content on the particular sub-pages (eg Chambres d'Hôtes dans une ferme for one page, and Chambres d'Hôtes avec salon et terrasse (with living room and terrace). Gîte for 2-3 people etc.? It seems perhaps I should. What do you think as a principle for such situations?

[itrogers]

I would look at the site structure/sub pages of other successful businesses like yours, who may even be competitors. Especially those ranking ahead of you. You might want to adopt an SEO strategy that your competition uses successfully and tailor it to your own brand. Why re-invent the wheel ya know?

Also, don't forget to do the research of what is actually being searched. Use the SEOmoz tools and Google Keyword tool to make sure that what you are trying to rank for has the search volume to justify your efforts.

[PeterMurray]

Thank you. Yes, that makes sense to me for a small site like ours - though I think it's a different ballgame for larger sites with a more developed category structure.  I have started my link-building efforts, with plenty more to come (and will mostly be targeting the Home Page).

Do you have any advice about what to go for on those sub pages, please?

[itrogers]

I always stick my "sweet spot" keywords in the title tag of the home page. My most profitable keywords (aka products and services) are best displayed on the home page for both users and search engines. I would focus on getting links with great anchor text for your most profitable keywords on your home page from authoritative and relevant sources.