Starting every page title with the keyword

[xcyte]

I've read everywhere that it's vital to get your target keyword to the front of the title that you're writing up.

Taking into account that Google likes things looking natural I wanted to check if my writing title's like this for example:

"Photographers Miami- Find the right Equipment and Accessories"

..Repeated for every page (maybe a page on photography in miami, one on videography in Orlando etc) is a smart way to write titles or if by clearly stacking keywords at the front of every title won't be as beneficial as other ways of doing it?

[DougRoberts]

Best practice is great starting point, but you need to work out what works for your audience, your offerings and your business.

For instance, having a call to action in your title can make a positive difference ("find" is a bit generic, but things like save, download the guide, buy now, etc can work, if it connects with the searchers intent.)

Luckily page titles are pretty easy to test - you'll need to keep an eye on your rankings and traffic and measure click-throughs for a suitable period depending on the search volume and taking into account any seasonality etc. As well as the traffic you receive, also look at the conversion rate too - especially important if you're testing for intent.

You can always tried a couple of variations in Adwords to see how they perform, especially for you more important keywords / pages.

The approach you take regarding your titles also depends on the type of page, the nature of the business, your specific business goals, the strength of your brand etc.

Take a good look at the other sites appearing in the SERPS and the titles/descriptions they're using. Put yourself in the place of your audience and try to see what's going to work and what isn't and how you might be able to differentiate your page from the rest.

Also remember that titles have to work in conjunction with the description. While the description isn't used for ranking, it can take some of the load of the title when it comes to supporting click-throughs.

Another point to consider is that Titles aren't just used in search engine results, but also when the page is shared / linked to etc. Depending on your site, you may want to adopt a slightly different strategy for your blog content than you use on a product catalogue for instance.

[xcyte]

Hey Doug,

For the record my scenario doesn't have anything to do with photography or Orlando, but the relevance behind your advice still completely rings true. While I doing title and meta planning I'm trying to focus on designing it all to be engaging for users while still applying the right mechanics.

I read something earlier today from Yoast:

"Write proper page titles. Not overly optimized titles targeting a gazillion keywords. No. Proper, one sentence titles that contain your brand name and your focus keyword. It’s not hard, just do it. And for your homepage your title should probably start with your brand name, 50% of the emails we get is about homepages where people have ridiculously optimized titles instead of just the name of their company."

My take on this is that writing title's (at least partially) as sentences is the way to go according to the advice. I also read today someone saying to have keywords in the title and description wrapped with other words.

However Dana's advice above, not to mention researching through a decent whack SERPs today seems to suggest that a format like: business name- keyword ..etc gets results.

Do you have any take on this Doug?

[DougRoberts]

While you obviously want to get your keywords into your title, and the general wisdom is the nearer the front, the better but it's not the whole story.

As well as optimising your titles for keyword relevancy/rankings you should also consider optimising for click-through.

The page title and the description used in the snippet in the search results are likely to be the first thing your visitors/customers are likely to see and if nobody is clicking on your entry in the search results it doesn't matter where you rank.

Think of your snippet as a small-ad or adwords snippet. It's got to provide a compelling reason for someone to click on your link. Can you find a way to differentiate yourself from your competitors and stand out? Can you do anything to give people confidence that they're going to find what they are after if they click on your link.

A well written title can punch above it's weight in the search results. (Like wise, a bad , un-engaging or spammy looking title can undermine your efforts.)

Also remember that your page may also rank for keywords that you're not optimising for, these may be long tail keywords with higher intent than the more generic keywords so make sure you look at the keywords sending traffic to each landing page (even low volumes) and look for themes/topics/intent you can optimise your pages around.

If you're targeting multiple locations (Photographers miami and photographers orlando for instance) then you'll need to make sure you avoid duplicate/thin content. How can you make these pages relevant to that location...

Think about the intent and commerciality when considering your keywords. If I'm searching for "photographers in orlando" am I looking for camera equipment or am I more likely to be looking for a photographer to take my picture and if this is the case - why would I want to buy any camera equipment!

[xcyte]

Dana that's super helpful, thanks for the extra info on trimming up the tail end

[danatanseo]

If you are starting every page title with "Photographers Miami" then I think that's probably not the best because you'll be trying to target the same keywords with every page. If, on the other hand your page titles look more like this:

Photopgrahers Miami | Cameras & Accessories

Photopgrahers Orlando | Cameras & Accessories

I think these are perfectly fine. You might notice that exchanged the word "equipment" with "cameras.: Equipment could mean anything. I assume you are selling cameras, so why not say so? Also I removed the word "Find." Save your call to action for your Meta description. That word "Find" is not helping your title at all. However, it's perfect for a meta description.

Those are my thoughts. I hope they help!