- Do some keyword research
- Write a title using the keywords
- Go back, Jack, and Do It Again …
With 500 SEO experts telling you how to write title tags for SEO you should reasonably expect all 500 of them to rank 1st for the query “How to write title tags for SEO”.
Let’s hope Google buries THIS article on — I dunno — PAGE TWELVE or something like that. I mean, Google, this article should NOT be ranked in the top 100 results for “How to write title tags for SEO”. That would not be fair.
Real search engine optimization doesn’t care about a SINGLE keyword. If you write a page of content it should be ranking 1st for 5, 10, 15, maybe 100 SEO expressions. If the best you can do with an article is to get on the 1st page of SERPs for 1-3 expressions your SEO sucks. Get another job.
The Search Optimization Community Is Too Title-Obsessed
Does putting keywords in your page titles help? Absolutely. We all know I deliberately used “how to write title tags for SEO” in my title because there are actually people searching on that query (although I suspect it’s mostly SEOs who want to see how well they rank for the expression, especially since they’re not sure how many of their links are helping now).
We tend to be very mechanical in our SEO advice. There are multiple articles on SEO Theory going back AT LEAST to 2007 where I advise people to put their keywords in the page titles. So if you can read this schlock advice on SEO Theory, it must be pretty damn good schlock advice, right?
It’s not schlock advice — but neither is it a very advanced SEO technique. If you’re sitting there bored to tears because all your boss wants you to do is put his favorite keywords in your page titles, you can slip one past him by optimizing those same pages for other keywords AT THE SAME TIME.
Page titles and links are two cornerstones of really bad SEO advice. They leave nothing to the imagination.
How to Change Your SEO Page Title Philosophy
If you’re an SEO blogger who has been writing “How To …” and “5 Reasons/Ways” articles today is the day you should stop walking on that treadmill and try something different. Here’s one suggestion for how you can go for a walk in the garden and enjoy beautiful rays of sunshine.
For the next 10 articles you write on your SEO blog, use titles that start out with “What I Think About …” and then put some topic in there. Don’t do anything stupid like go check your keyword tools to see which variations on “What I think About” people are searching for.
If you cannot resist temptation then start your titles with “Here Is My Opinion On …” — you MUST use all four words.
Better yet, try starting a page title with “If I May Intrude On Your Thoughts For a Moment …”. Do this 10 times in a row for your next 10 SEO blog posts. Whatever it is you want to say has to come after the expression “If I May Intrude On Your Thoughts For a Moment …”.
Do NOT even comment on THIS blog post until you have written at least ONE such blog post. I mean it. I will delete your comment if you have not published an article on your SEO blog that starts out with “If I May Intrude On Your Thoughts For a Moment …”. You don’t deserve to share your opinion on this article if you’re too chicken to use a title like that.
Why You Should Stop Optimizing Page Titles
Journalists are struggling to find their true identity in the SEO-driven world of Google News and Bing News. Their organizations are being told by high-falutin’ SEO gurus that they have to inject keywords into every article title. Why? Because people use keywords to search for content.
What those SEO experts neglect to mention, however, is that people get their ideas for those keywords from some published source. By my best guestimate about 1/4 to 1/2 of the search traffic to all my blogs is driven by the article titles I write. Some of those article titles are keyword-enrichened SEO wonders like “20 Hard Core SEO Tips”. Some of the titles are actually based on oddball queries people use to find content on this site.
Here is an example: “anchor text for kindergarten writing”. That phrase surfaced this barely relevant page and enticed someone to spend a fair amount of time poking around SEO Theory. What a great title for an SEO article: “Anchor Text for Kindergarten Writing”. I have no idea of what it could possibly mean but writing such an article would be fun.
If you want to play in the big leagues of SEO you have to stop CHASING keywords and start MAKING them. That is the special power of journalists. If they publish articles with memorable headlines, or which say especially witty things, people will search for THOSE ARTICLES. If you want to own the rankings then just build the query spaces for yourself. I’ve been doing this for years.
I would much rather see this article rank 1st for “Anchor Text for Kindergarten Writing” than “How to Write Title Tags for SEO”. Anyone can compete for a “How to …” page title but to create value in a truly unique title no one else thinks is worth using — THAT is powerful SEO. It’s more powerful than all the link anchor text in the world.
How to Use Page Titles in SEO
Nothing confuses an SEO more than seeing a listing in a SERP that “doesn’t make sense” or which “violates the rule”. You’ve all still got your dog-eared copies of “Mechanical SEO Copywriting 101″. Turn to page 58 where it says, “A well-optimized page uses keywords in the title, meta description, and page URL”. Okay, now that we know this universal rule is carven in stone and that Google’s stock price is tied to making it always be true, let’s throw the book out.
Screw using page titles for SEO. Or, rather, screw using keyword research to decide what your page titles should be. Keyword research should not be making our search optimization decisions. It should be your search optimization decision to do keyword research TODAY but not necessarily TOMORROW. Keyword research is OPTIONAL for the truly advanced practitioner of search engine optimization.
Your page title is a blank canvas. You can use it to create art or you paint by numbers there. It really doesn’t matter to me. If you’re too afraid to NOT use keywords in your page title you’re not ready for advanced SEO.
If you’re too afraid to publish an article that doesn’t have a snowball’s chance in Hell of getting to the top of the SERPs for a competitive expression, you don’t deserve any real search referral traffic. All you’ve earned with that attitude is a very small fraction of the traffic that is available to you.
Your page title should set the reader’s expectation. It should create the framework for the value you are offering to the reader. Anyone can write a dumb article titled “10 Great SEO Blogs You Should Be Reading Today”. All they have to do is grab their bookmarks and flesh them out with 1-2 sentences of drool-laden fanboy copy.
But if you want to prove your search optimization Kung Fu doesn’t suck you need to write “My Favorite SEO Blogs Have Never Used Keywords In Article Titles Because They Glow in the Dark” and each paragraph you write about a blog has to sing itself off the page and into the SERPs for a year. That is, every paragraph you write needs to bring in visitors today, tomorrow, and the next 365 days. THAT is true search engine optimization.
There’s no keyword research involved. You don’t build links. You can put numbers in your page URLs.
Fear Undermines Your SEO More Than Competition
It’s your lack of faith in your ability to create something interesting and valuable that holds you back. Here are a few examples of powerful faith-in-self SEO blogs. You should be able to figure out why just by looking at these queries.
- This Bay Area Dude
- This Seattle Area Guy
- Look at the SECOND Listing, Not The First
- This Opinionated Fellow Don’t Care About Keywords
- The Greatest Movie of All Time
I could go on — perhaps I should — but if you don’t see the point by now then you need to go back and reread your SEO 101 book. You’re not ready for Sophomoric SEO, let alone the Advanced Stuff.
But seriously — my point is that you create value in the page title. It’s not the other way around. Sure, there are times when you fall back on a mechanical approach. Maybe you’re tired. Maybe you’re not feeling well. Maybe you feel like people are not getting what they should be getting when they come to your blog for some crazy expression. There are GOOD reasons to chase the keywords, but none of them include “Because that is what an SEO is supposed to do.”
What Is An SEO Supposed To Do With A Page Title?
If your client is on the phone demanding to know why they’re not ranking number 1 for “How to Write Title Tags for SEO” even though you put the keywords into the page title and URL, you need a backup plan. Notice how I say that quite often? SEO is more about backup plans than links or title tags because, frankly, shit happens and you need to know how to deal with it. Page Titles are not magic bullets. Nor are links. Look at all the grief and anguish link-dependent SEOs put themselves (and their clients) through every time Google burps. It’s stupid.
Give the client more revenue through the search results and he generally shuts up. Sure, he wants that vanity query but if you show him the money he may just fall in love with a new query. So what if there was no money in it before you came along? That’s no reason to waste your time and resources trying to please a client who hired you to do what he supposedly doesn’t know how to do.
As long as you let the client call the shots on how to optimize for search you’re setting yourself up for failure. If the client really knows so much about SEO he doesn’t need you nearly as much as you need him. What kind of value are you bringing to a business relationship like that?
So here is what you need to do with page titles: forget they even exist. Heck, just let the search engines figure out what they want to put there. Use the titles to say something important and relevant but assume no one will see them. What would you want to say if you knew you were the only person on Earth who would hear it?
The reason why this is important is that if you say something ELSE that is worthwhile, people will go back and check that title so they can remember it. And then again, if people WANT to remember your article title, which will be easier: a title that 100 other schmucks are trying to rank for or a title that YOU own, in which YOU created the first and most value?
If you have to think about that you’re not ready for this article. That’s okay. Lots of people are not ready for advanced search engine optimization. That is, after all, why they are searching with queries like “How to Write Title Tags for SEO”.
Bless their SEO 101 hearts.
Michael Martinez was previously the Director of Search Strategies for Visible Technologies, Inc. A former moderator at SEO forums such as JimWorld and Spider-food, Michael has been active in search engine optimization since 1998 and Web site design and promotion since 1996.Michael was a regular contributor to Suite101 (1998-2003) and SEOmoz (2006).
Source : http://www.seo-theory.com/2012/04/20/did-you-really-expect-keywords-here/
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