feedburner
Enter your email address:

Delivered by FeedBurner

feedburner count

Breaking News:2011 Social Media Report is Out!

Labels: , , , ,

Yup, this is the third annual version of the 2011 Social Media Marketing Report, from the folks over at Social Media Examiner - and as usual, I’m pumped about the results! First, go and download the .pdf for yourownself and then dig in! 

I know that if you’re like me, you’ll find this report chock full of great items….on every type  and kind of question that one can think about. 

You can also watch the video of same too…ion that same page, eh…for a quick summary — but dont think that there aren’t a whole lot of other aspects to learn when you download the full report and read it in it’s entirety!

It will help you to  understand how marketers are using  social media, Social Media Examiner commissioned the 2011 Social Media Marketing Industry Report. Social Media Examiner, set out to uncover the “who, what, where, when and why” of  social media marketing with this report.

Here’s a list of some of the questions that they asked over 3300 marketers for their opinons on all things social media… 

 •  The top 10 social media questions marketers want answered
• How much time marketers invest with social media activities
• The top benefits of social media marketing and how time invested affects results
• The most used social media tools and services
• Marketers’ future social media plans
• Activities social media marketers are outsourcing

 

Is Social media is important for my business?

A significant 90% of marketers said that social media was important to their businesses. The self-employed (67%) and small business owners with 2 or more employees (66%) were more likely to strongly agree!

Want more, eh? Me too…and I found some very impressive stats on use of various social media outlets and that was changed, I noted since last year.

Commonly used social media tools?

 By a long shot, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and blogs were the top four social media tools used by marketers, with Facebook leading the pack. All of the other social media tools paled in comparison to these top four.

It should be noted that in 2010, Twitter was in first place with 88% and Facebook was close behind with 87%. Since 2010, Twitter lost 4%, LinkedIn lost 7% and Facebook gained 5%. In our 2009 study, only 77% of businesses were using Facebook.

The self-employed (80%) and owners of small businesses (78%) were more likely to use LinkedIn. Larger businesses were more likely to use YouTube or other video and less likely to use blogs (68%+).

A close examination of which tools more experienced social media marketers are using compared to those just getting underway provides further insight.

More? Nope, not here…you need to go and get your own copy of same – it’s free and it’s got some very interesting stats and the conclusions made too, are also both surprising and newsworthy too!

Tell us what you're thinking...
and oh, if you want a pic to show with your comment, go get a gravatar!




Meta Description Optimization: Writing Effective Meta Descriptions for SEO

Labels: , , , ,

On the heels of last week’s article on Title Tag Optimization for SEO, I’d like to cover another important aspect to optimizing websites to place well in the SERPs – Meta Descriptions.

Meta tags in general have been a very controversial topic over the years in the SEO industry, and rightly so. In the early days of SEO, search engine optimizers and many webmasters used the Meta Keywords tag as a platform to stuff as many target keywords into a page as possible – whether they were relevant or not. Finding ways to game the system is a typical practice in the SEO industry, and this strategy actually worked for quite a while.

The problem is that people were abusing the use of this tag and many pages that shouldn’t have been ranking well were taking top positions for keywords they had no business showing up for. The quality of search results suffered, and search engines soon laid the smack down on these sites, knocking them from top positions in favor of websites that were of a higher quality.

And so – like the dinosaurs – the use of Meta Keywords as an effective SEO strategy has died out. However, it is another Meta tag that lives on and is (if used in conjunction with other SEO best practices) a very effective way to achieve better search engine rankings.

It is the Meta Description tag.

The Meta Description tag is typically a sentence or two of content which describes the content of a particular webpage. Search engines may consider or display this tag at their discretion. Relevant meta description tags often appear in search results as part of the page description below the page title.

Your Meta Description can be found between your webpage’s section. Here’s how a Meta Description typically looks for in a site’s source code:

A Meta Description in the Source Code

As stated above, your webpage’s Meta Description may also show up in the search results:

A Meta Description in the SERPs

Okay, now we know what and where you Meta Description is. Let’s discuss some strategies on how to compose it effectively for SEO.

The length of your Meta Descriptions is a very important matter. If you’re familiar with search results, you’ll notice that search engines typically only display so much of your webpage’s SERP description before it cuts them off with an ellipsis (…).

In addition, the length of the description being displayed can vary depending on the search query and the pages that are being served up.

Typically, for more general search queries (i.e. “car“), your site’s top-level pages will be the ones that show up in the SERPs. However, for search queries that are of the long-tailed variety (i.e. “2011 chrysler 200 red sedan columbus“)

Based on my research and experience, here are the average character space lengths that show up before the cutoff for search queries of the more general variety – typically bringing up top-level pages:

Google: As few as 136 characters, as many as 156 characters in length.Bing: As few as 135 characters, as many as 169 characters in length.

The average character space lengths that show up before the cutoff for search queries of the more long-tailed variety – typically bringing up your site’s deep-interior pages:

Google: As many as 299 characters in length.Bing: Did not show a noticeable expansion of SERP descriptions for long-tailed searches.

One thing that should be remembered with these expanded SERP results is that it is not necessarily just pulling the Meta Description, it is usually pulling together text from different sections on the page. Therefore, it may be mashing together as many as 3 different sources of information into the SERP description.

Why does that matter to you? You should stay conservative with the lengths of your Meta Descriptions on deep-interior pages. I’d say 175-225 characters spaces is good.

The expanded SERP descriptions are definitely not a license to blow out all deep-interior Meta Descriptions to 299 characters or beyond, but merely a reference point to show you that they could potentially be expanded a bit from how you write your top-level descriptions.

Note: The character space thresholds before cutoff are just what I’ve seen after thoroughly examining the SERP results. They may be subject to change as the search engines change how they display results.

The moral of the story is that you need to maximize the space available to you in the Meta Description tag – especially for top-level pages. Try to write complete thoughts and finish them around the cutoff points. If the description goes beyond, search engines will find an appropriate point to cut it off and what comes after that point probably won’t matter as much for your rankings.

Just as with title tags, this one should be a no-brainer. Use your target keywords in your Meta Descriptions. For example, if your website’s main purpose is to help you sell “Used Cars,” then you’re going to want to mention that in your Meta Description.

Before you do that, I recommend conducting extensive keyword research to determine which keywords are best for your site’s Meta Descriptions.

Search engines are in the business of displaying the most relevant results for any given search query. Relevancy is their main goal! This means that you’re going to have to ensure that the keywords you’re targeting in your site’s Meta Descriptions are highly relevant to the content on the page.

For example, let’s say you have an internal page on your site about “2011 Chrysler 200.” Which of the following Meta Descriptions would you consider to be more relevant?

Our dealership sells new and used cars. Find the latest new and used cars from our vast inventory of vehicles.

or

The 2011 Chrysler 200 mid-size sedan offers consumers exceptional craftsmanship, a refined driving experience, innovative technology, an abundance of standard safety features, and more. Test drive a 2011 Chrysler 200 today!

If you’re thinking like a search engine, then you’d probably guess that the second description is more relevant to the term “2011 Chrysler 200.” If all other things are equal, then you’d probably be right!

In addition, having Meta Descriptions that are highly correlated with on-page content is good for both usability and click-through rates. If a user is searching specifically for a 2011 Chrysler 200, then they’ll be more likely to click on a result with an enticing and relevant SERP description like in the 2nd example above.

If a website visitor land on a page that is about something different than what they were searching for, that could be a turn off which will lead to more bounces and poor user engagement/conversion.

Keywords at the beginning of a Meta Description tend to have more weight and ranking power than those at the end – or those that are past the cut-off point. Therefore, you should place your most important keywords towards the beginning of each Meta Description.

For example, if on your homepage you wish to target the keyword “new cars” as your most important target keyword and “used cars” as your 2nd most important keyword, then it might make sense to write a Meta Description similar to this:

Jake’s Auto Dealership sells new cars and used cars in Columbus, Ohio. Come in and test drive on of our new or pre-owned vehicles today!

If you’re really targeting the keyword “new cars” more so than anything else, then it would make less sense to write a description like this rather than the one above:

Jake’s Auto Dealership sells used cars in Columbus, Ohio. Come in and test drive on of our new cars or pre-owned vehicles today!

Just remember, the more important a keyword is, the closer it should be to the front of your Meta Description. But that’s they easy part. Writing an effective Meta Description can be much less black-and-white if you’re trying to target more than just two keywords.

While simply repeating keywords is probably easiest – it is not good for someone who might be reading the SERP description after performing a search query, and it is certainly not good for targeting multiple keywords in a non-spammy way.

There is no need to be repetitious in your keyword usage within the Meta Description tag. Mentioning the same keyword over and over again won’t help you rank any better. Instead, try to think of ways you can combine phrases and utilize a search engine’s natural ability to match phrases together so as to give you more room to target multiple relevant phrases in the Meta Description.

For example, if you’re trying to target both “new cars” and “used cars” in your Meta description, then you could write:

Another example, let’s say you want to rank for “car dealer columbus ohio”, “auto dealer dublin ohio,” “new cars columbus”, “new cars dublin”, “used cars columbus” and “used cars dublin.” In order to target all of those phrases in your Meta Description, you might write something like this:

Auto dealer selling new and used cars in Columbus and Dublin, Ohio.

A search engine can match all of the individual words together, allowing you to hit many keywords at once – all while saving the space you’d have used if you simply listed out the keywords in order. Finding opportunities to write sentences in ways that a search engine can match the keywords together can help you hit on many keywords all at once.

Note: Both examples were obviously shortened in order to make a point.

As with title tags, here’s where it gets tricky. Utilizing keyword combinations and matching is a great way to hit on multiple keywords at once while saving space. But I will flat out tell you that nothing beats a good old exact-match phrase in your Meta Description in terms of relevance.

For example, if somebody is searching for “new car,” a Meta Description that actually used the phrase “new car” should win out versus one where the keywords “new” and “car” aren’t right next to each other – if all things are equal.

The issue is keyword proximity. Keyword strings that appear closer together are better than having to rely on a search engine’s ability to match them together. Consider the following sentence…

The woman drove her car to the store to buy a new purse.

In a round-a-bout way, the above sentence could be considered somewhat relevant to the term “new car.” A search engine would loosely be able to distinguish this. But is it more relevant to the term “new car” than a sentence that says…

The woman drove her new car to the store to buy a purse.

I’d say the second one is more relevant to the term “new car” than the first, and that is where you have to strike a balance. It really comes down to just how focused do you want to be in terms of keyword targeting.

If you have a need to target multiple keywords on a page, then combination-matching is the way to go. However, if you have a page that has more of a singular keyword focus, then using an exact-match keyword is better for relevancy.

Each webpage on your site should have a Meta Description that is unique, different from other pages, and uniquely relevant to the content on that particular webpage.

Why does this matter? Google only displays a max of two results from one site in the SERPs. So having multiple pages with the same Meta Description may make it difficult for them to determine which one is more deserving of being ranked prominently. And thus, they may choose to rank none at all.

To go back to the reference I’ve used before about duplicate titles and meta tags, think of it like reading a book. If you’re skimming the table of contents and see that all the chapters have the same description, how will you be able to quickly jump to a highly-specific point in that book with any confidence in what that section is actually about? You won’t. You’ll just put it back down, and so will a search engine.

Duplicate Meta Descriptions can cause the appearance of duplicate content (even if on-page content is different and unique from page-to-page). This may cause some pages to get stuck under a search engine’s filters. Also, it tends to look like spamming, which is the opposite of what you want.

As I’ve said before, every webpage and every title has to be able to stand on its own two feet in terms of ranking in search engines. Its perfectly okay to have Meta Descriptions that are very similar and correlate with an overarching site theme, but having duplicates really hinders their individual ability to be highly relevant to the site’s on-page content, and thus for any search queries.

It is very important to remember that your site’s Meta Description tag serves the function of advertising copy. It’s main purpose is to draw readers to a website from the search results – making it very important to write it in such a way that it is highly readable (while still integrating target keywords) and compelling enough to draw a click.

Writing a highly-readable, compelling Meta Description that integrates important keywords can serve to draw a much higher click-through rate to a specific webpage.

Additional note: In order to maximize click-through rates on search engine result pages, you’ll need to remember that Google and other search engines bold keywords in the description when they match search queries. Using keywords that are relevant to search queries is a good way to stand out in the mess that is a SERP.

If you service a specific geo-area, then you’re absolutely going to need to mention it in your Meta Description in order to show up for a local search query such as “Car Dealer Columbus Ohio.” If you’d like to target more than one city that you service, then it may be worth mentioning both. I try not to go beyond 4-5 depending on length of city name.

Remember, search engines are very literal – meaning if you want to show up for something it should be mentioned on your page. So if you want to show up for “car dealer dublin ohio,” it will need to be somewhere on your site – unless you have a nice local listing built out. It probably should still be on there either way.

I’d recommend something like:

New and used car dealer selling sedans, SUVs, convertibles, and more. Serving Columbus, Dublin, Hilliard, Westerville, and Central Ohio.

Important note: Make sure that the use of a geo-term in the Meta Descripiton correlates with similar use within your site’s content or it won’t be as effective.

You should not be using any special symbols in your site’s Meta Descriptions. They aren’t helpful in terms of rankings and are simply a waste of space. I’d just stay away from them altogether when it comes to Meta Descriptions. Some special symbols include (©), (®), and (™).

Here is a full list of HTML Accent Entity codes that I refer to often.

Anyhow, hope this helps you write better Meta Descriptions. I’m sure I didn’t quite cover everything as there is much that goes into it, but I tried to be as comprehensive as I could. Let me know if you have any questions or suggestions for additions to the article!

My related posts plugin has broken. I am currently searching for a replacement. Hold tight until then and use the search box in the siebar.

Why not subscribe to receive updates right to your inbox? If you're looking to learn more about Search Engine Optimization (SEO), Social Media, or Wordpress then I promise it will be worth your time! I won't share your email or use it to send you spam. That's just not my style...


View the original article here





The Times They Are A-Changin’

Labels: ,

To quote Bob Dylan:

The Times They Are A-Changin’

Indeed they are.

Effective April 4th, I’ll be changing employment to begin working as the Internet Marketing (something or other – not sure yet) at Germain. I’ve already put in my two weeks notice at People To My Site where I currently serve as the Director of SEO.

I just wanted to take some time to announce it here and assure my readers (all 200+) that I’ll be continuing my blog. This has been the primary reason for my inactivity lately. I’ve decided to take this precaution to avoid the mass panic and hysteria that I’m sure would follow the dissolution of the Agent SEO blog and brand!

Everyone can sleep well at night knowing that I’ll continue to plug away here with quality SEO tips and occasional rants. I wouldn’t normally take these types of precautions, but my following is so die-hard that I didn’t want anyone to lose their minds and go off the deep end. So there that is. Just kidding by the way (like anyone would lose sleep over this little thing).

The real purpose of this post is to take an opportunity to thank People To My Site. Without them, I would have never been able to cut out my little slice of the world (i.e. my blog) or gain the amazing professional experience that their company allowed. In my 3 years with the company, I’ve had the great pleasure of working with awesome clients and even better people – not to mention the cool perk of being able to bring my dog “Rocky” to work every day for the last 1.5 years!

I’ll definitely miss and reminisce about some of the best moments including Christmas Karaoke, “Grilled Cheese Wednesday” Softball, Pot Lucks, Dog Parties, NCAA Tourney Pools, and just shooting the shit with good people.

As an organization they supported my blog and the development of my personal brand, and even supported much greater causes like helping me in my efforts to donate warm winter clothing to needy school children this past Winter! I am ever grateful.

The people at PTMS are all top-notch, and I consider them all to be my friends! So, thank you….

Jen Ridenour, Jason Walker, Guy Jacks, Ben Clarke, Brendin & Jessica King, Zack Singer, Mike Wright, Jared McKinley, Drew Krebs, Andy Anaya, Mike Ashcraft, Terrence Tuy, Sean Hill, Karin Oliver Kreft, Scott Sharkey, Bob Masters, Larry Blagg, and of course my right-hand man Aaron Flax (also a groomsman in my wedding)!

I’m really going to miss working with all of you guys, and the chance to bring my dog to work!

And to those employees that have moved on to other opportunities but who I became great friends with, thank you…

Steve White, Nate Riggs, Cheryl Harrison, Robby Herbst, Gabriel Escamilla, Arlette Garay, Chris Wright, Monica Leck, Sara Kear, Hedy Asal, Josh Boles, Josh “Butters” Wilson, Chris Johnson, Dave Schirtzinger, Dan Weatherby, and I’m sure there are a few more!

(I hope I spelled all last names right, and I tried to link to all who had Twitter handles)

If your name was mentioned above – it is because you are awesome! To anyone looking to connect with great people, I’d recommend getting to know each and every one of them as they are all high-quality!

As for my new opportunity, I must admit I’m very excited and very nervous.

My excitement comes from chance I’ll have to continue to do SEO, while getting the opportunity to also do Social Media, Web & Graphic Design (my true passions), and more.

My nervousness comes from a general fear of change, up to and including missing my friends (and hoping the PTMS continues to do well after I leave), missing bringing my dog to work, and the change in the every day reality that has been my life for the last three years.

Whatever the outcome, it WILL be a shock to my system initially as is the case with any big change or transition.

Do I think I’ll do great work at my new job? Hell yes. Am I sad to leave the awesome people I work with now? Hell yes. Will the change to my every day reality take time to get used to? I’m sure it will.

Most importantly, will I be happy? I think yes :-)

I’ve heard that they say in order for a door to open, another must close. This is absolutely true, but it sure can leave an empty feeling when you do close some doors. Here’s hoping that everyone does well, and that we see each other often. Although the paths of our journeys are now changing, they’ll be sure to cross again some day.

Okay enough with the mushy philosophical stuff!

Check back soon for some good-old SEO awesomeness!!!

My related posts plugin has broken. I am currently searching for a replacement. Hold tight until then and use the search box in the siebar.

Why not subscribe to receive updates right to your inbox? If you're looking to learn more about Search Engine Optimization (SEO), Social Media, or Wordpress then I promise it will be worth your time! I won't share your email or use it to send you spam. That's just not my style...


View the original article here





Title Tag Optimization: A Comprehensive Guide to Writing Effective Titles for SEO

Labels: , , , , , ,

For a blog about SEO, its been quite a while since I’ve written a post about the topic of Search Engine Optimization. Well, that’s about to change. Over my next few posts we’re going to be hitting proper SEO techniques hard!

We’ll be starting with a comprehensive guide to optimizing your site’s title tags. Writing good title tags is one of the most important aspects of SEO, and is the backbone of any solid Search Engine Optimization program. But before we get into tactics involved with writing good title tags, lets first identify where it is on your site and where it will show up in search engines.

The title tag is the text that appears on your browser’s title bar. A title is required in every HTML and XHTML document.

You can find your title tag in your site’s source code:

Columbus SEO Expert + Search Engine Optimization Tips + Agent SEO

You can find your title in your site’s browser window:

Agent SEO's Title in the Browser Window

See your title in your the search results:

Agent SEO's Title in Search Results

Okay, now we know what and where you title is. Let’s get on to tips on how to compose it effectively for SEO.

Okay, here comes a baseball reference. Think of your homepage as your clean-up hitter and your site’s internal pages as the rest of the lineup. Your cleanup hitter (i.e. homepage) should be the page that gives you the most production and should have the most power. Your site’s internal pages should be built in support of your homepage, should act as a supplement to your homepage’s optimization efforts, should get into far more detail about your site, but should be able to stand on their own two feet in terms of ranking abilities.

Your homepage typically wields the most ranking power and should be used to target the most top-level generalized keywords. Your site’s internal pages typically wield less power (especially the deeper they are in the site), but can be much more targeted in terms of keyword focus and conversion opportunities (i.e. long-tailed keywords).

The length of your title tags is a very important matter. If you’re familiar with search results, you’ll notice that search engines typically only display so much of your webpage’s title before it cuts them off with an ellipsis (…).

Based on my research and experience, here are the average character space lengths allowed in titles before the cutoff, along with the max length I’ve seen:

Google: average if 66 character spaces, max of 70Bing: average if 65 character spaces, max of 71

What I’ve see is that if your title tag is over 70 characters, the search engines will find an appropriate place to cut it off. If it’s right at around 70, then they’ll typically allow the full title to show.

The moral of the story is that you need to maximize the space available to you in the title tag – for now that’s about the first 65-70 character spaces. This means that you should try to focus on only 2-3 keyword phrases per page as that is probably all you’ll be able to fit within reason.

Stay away from title tags that are too short (shorter than 50 character spaces) as those waste valuable space, and try to stay away from writing titles that are too long (anything over 80 is too long) as there is a diminishing return after the title gets cut off – not to mention that nobody typically reads after the cutoff point and it might look like spam to a search engine (if you use it to stuff keywords).

This one is a no-brainer. Use your target keywords in your title tag. For example, if your website’s main purpose is to sell an “Apple,” then you’re going to want to mention that in your title tags.

Before doing that, you’ll need to conduct extensive keyword research to determine which keywords are best for your site.

Search engines are all about relevance – meaning they are in the business of displaying the most relevant results for any given search query. In order to meet that criteria, you’re going to have to ensure that the keywords that you’re using in your site’s title tags are relevant to the content on the page.

For example, let’s say you have an internal page on your site about “D’Arcy Spice Apples.” Which of the following title tags would you consider to be more relevant?

or

D’Arcy Spice Applies – Yellowish-Green Apples – Agent SEO

If you’re thinking like a search engine, then you’d probably guess that the second title is more relevant to the term “D’Arcy Spice Apples.” You’d be right!

In addition, having title tags that are highly correlated with on-page content is good for both usability and click-through rates. If a user is searching specifically for D’Arcy Spice Apples, then they’ll be more likely to click on a title that says as much. Also, if they’re looking for D’Arcy Spice Apples and they land on a page that is about something different, that could be a turn off which will lead to more bounces and poor user engagement/conversion.

Keywords at the front of a title tag tend to have more weight and ranking power than those at the back of a title tag – or those that are past the cut-off point. Therefore, you should place your most important keywords should be at the beginning of the title.

For example, if on your homepage you wish to target the keyword “green apples” as your most important target keyword and “red apples” as your 2nd most important keyword, then it might make sense to write a title similar to this:

Green Apples – Red Apples – Agent SEO

If you’re really targeting the keyword “Green Apples,” then it wouldn’t make sense to write a title like this:

Red Apples – Agent SEO – Green Apples

Pretty self explanatory. But this is the easy part. You’ll see that there are far more dynamics that go into writing an effective title tag out than just listing keywords in order of importance. Please remember, its about maximizing the space!

While simply repeating keywords over and over again may have worked with SEO 2004, that is simply not necessary today. There is no need to be repetitious in your keyword usage within the title tag. Instead, try to think of ways you can combine phrases so as to give you more room to add other relevant phrases to the title tag.

For example, this keyword phrase is 25 character spaces long:

This one is only 18 character spaces long:

That’s a difference of 7 character spaces, and you’ve still targeted both keywords. I know 7 may not seem like a lot, but when you only have 70 to work with every little bit counts. Remember, search engines are smart so they can match and map keywords together to determine relevance. Use that to your advantage in order to maximize your space.

Okay, here’s where it gets tricky. I will flat out tell you that nothing beats a good old exact-match phrase in your title tag in terms of relevance. For example, if somebody is searching for “Green Apples, ” a title tag that says “Green Apples” should win out of one that says “Green & Red Apples” if all things are equal.

The issue is keyword proximity. Keyword strings that appear closer together are better than having to rely on a search engine’s ability to match them together. Consider the following sentence…

The boy jumped over the red fence carrying an apple.

In a round-a-bout way, the above sentence could be considered somewhat relevant to the term red apple. A search engine would loosly be able to distinguish this. But is it more relevant to the term “Red Apple” than a sentence that says…

I think not.

The issue here that you must find is balance. If you only want to target the keywords “Green Apple” and “Red Apple” then writing a title tag like the one below makes more sense:

Green Apple – Red Apple – Agent SEO

However, if you have a need to target more keywords, then you’ll need to work in combinations rather than exact-match phrases by necessity.

Green & Red Apples – Planting Orchards – Agent SEO

Hopefully that helped demystify the issue a bit.

I have a couple of opinions on brand names.

Brand names help create trust. Therefore, it is important to use them in your site’s title tags. For example, Nike’s click-through rate is probably a bit higher than that of a blog talking about Nike shoes simply due to the brand trust factor alone.However, unless your brand has a very important keyword in it, put it at the end of all title tags. Remember, important keywords need to go towards the front of all title tags, so putting your brand name at the front of every tag inadvertently steals weight from your target keywords.

Your title tags for ever webpage should be unique and different. Why? Well, since Google only displays a max of two results from one site in the SERPs, then having multiple pages with the same title may make it difficult for them to determine which one is more deserving of being ranked. In this case, they may choose to rank none at all.

Think of it like reading a book. If you’re skimming the table of contents and see that all the chapters have the same name, how will you be able to quickly jump to a highly-specific point in that book with any confidence? You won’t. You’ll just put it back down, and so will a search engine.

Duplicate title tags can cause the appearance of duplicate content, which may cause some pages to get stuck under a search engine’s filters – which is the opposite of what you want. This can be done by accident, negligence, or on purpose. Either way, its something that should be corrected.

Every webpage and every title has to be able to stand on its own two feet in terms of ranking in search engines. Its perfectly okay to have title tags that are very similar, but having duplicates really hinders their individual ability to be highly relevant to the site’s on-page content, and thus for any search queries.

Stop-Words” are words that are extremely common (pronouns, prepositions, etc) that most search engines skip over in order to save disk space, or to speed up indexing. They have no inherent value to a search engine.

Some of the stop-words: a, about, an, as, are, but, be, or, and, and there are many others.

Try to avoid using them if at all possible. The best example I can think of was a client a while back whose homepage title started with, “The official website of the…”. This was pretty bad, and a tremendous waste of space in terms of optimization of target keywords.

This one is up to you. I’d say using dashes (-), the (&) symbol is okay. Hell, I even use plus signs in my titles (thinking about changing that). However, I’d stay away from using other symbols that may just serve to waste space such as the (©), (®), or (™) symbol.

Here is a full list of HTML Accent Entity codes that I refer to often.

If you service a specific geo-area, then you’re probably going to need to mention it in your title tag in order to show up for a local search query such as “Green Apples Columbus Ohio.” I’d recommend something like:

Green Apples – Columbus OH – Agent SEO

Important note: Make sure that the use of a geo-term correlates with similar use within your site’s content or it won’t be as effective.

Anyhow, hope this helps you write better title tags. Let me know if you have any questions!

My related posts plugin has broken. I am currently searching for a replacement. Hold tight until then and use the search box in the siebar.

Why not subscribe to receive updates right to your inbox? If you're looking to learn more about Search Engine Optimization (SEO), Social Media, or Wordpress then I promise it will be worth your time! I won't share your email or use it to send you spam. That's just not my style...


View the original article here