Keyword Placement in Title Tag Case Study for SEO consulting

07 Jul

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Research and Test's

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Keyword Placement in Title Tag Case Study for SEO consulting

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According to search ranking factors done by SEOmoz, your keyword in your title tag is the upmost importance, but the placement of that keyword in your title tag has been debated. Some believe that placing your branding first and then kewyords in your title tag causes little or no difference when optimizing a page in the SERPS. I am going to finally uncover this once and for all.

With my experience in title tag optimization I feel that by placing the keyword I truly want to rank for OR the most difficult keyword I am optimizing for on a given page should be the first or close to the begining of the title tag and NOT the end. When I optimized lunarpages for the term “web hosting” I did change the title tag and moved web hosting closer to the front of the title tag and along with many other alterations we where able to get to the home page for “web hosting”.

However because I did much more with the site besides altering the title tag we can not use this as a real life example of the power of keyword placement within your title tag.

Currently I rank 32 in google for SEO consulting. My current title tag reads “Joe Whyte - Seo Consulting - rockyfied”.

Below is a photo of the current rankings within google for the term “seo consulting”.

Adversely I also rank #3 on the first page of google for “Joe Whyte”. See below for image.

I will attempt to change my title tag and Repost my findings. I am curious to know what other people will think about doing this change and the importance of keyword placement within your title tag.

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7 Comments »

Bernie Borges // July 8, 2007 at 9:36 am

I have always advised my clients to emphasize primary and focused keywords in their title tag. The way I describe it to clients is to explain that search engines read the title tag, then the content on the rest of the page looking for a close match. Therefore, the keyword in the title tag is critically important.

Jaan Kanellis // July 8, 2007 at 9:50 am

How do you rank when your not logged into G personalization search.

joe.whyte // July 8, 2007 at 10:38 am

Hey Jaan, thanks for pointing this out.

I have included links to my actual rankings right now without personalized search on and I rank the same.

seo consulting:
http://www.google.com/search?q=seo+consulting&hl=en&client=firefox-a&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&hs=kCv&start=30&sa=N

joe whyte:
http://www.google.com/search?q=joe+whyte&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a

Sean Hakes » SEO Consulting - Title Tag // October 19, 2007 at 10:21 am

[…] ran into this article published by Joe Whyte called Keyword Placement in Title Tag Case Study for SEO Consulting which touched on the basis that its important to have the keyword you are targeting as close to the […]

Karlonia // January 25, 2008 at 10:27 am

This is an interesting study on title tag placement. I have heard from some marketers that using a keyword twice in the title tag can give a slight boost to rankings, but I’m not sure about this. I’ve always been reluctant to do it because of possible over-optimization.

Theatons Toys // May 28, 2008 at 7:04 am

Quality research there joe.
It would be good if you owned all 3 joe whyte domains and with 0 links saying “joe” or “whyte” and could therefore compare them for that term .. but then again there so many factors at place.
Good post though

Anthony Cases // June 17, 2008 at 3:27 am

as a new blogger, it’s nice to read this and see how people network. I generally find new bloggers by going through comments as well. That and recipe searches. Good stuff!What made you come up with this site.