I'm optimizing a car dealership site. I only usually put the name of the dealership in a few meta titles here and there. But my predecessor put the name in every title on every page. So my question is...it this a good practice....I feel like reiterating the site name in every meta title is taking up valuable space! Thoughts?
As long as you put the company name at the end of the page title, I do not see any problem with it. Especially if your company name has your most important keywords in it, it will help a lot to rank your pages for those keywords, if it is placed in the page title as well as in the page content. The format I would suggest to use is: "Page title | Company name"
I am not a fan of this technique. I agree that the company name can be a waste of keyword space. You also end up having all pages on your site competing to rank for your company name. In some instances this might be worth doing. Sometimes you want to build up brand recognition and reinforce your site's theme.
The point is I already rank for my company name obviously. Is it important to have the name in every title? Again I would rather leave it out for the subpages and target other keywords.
In your title, <title>Chicagoland Cadillac Dealers | New & Certified Used Cadillac Cars </title>, you are selling Cadillac cars in the Chicago area. But when you do basic keyword research, the first 24 characters (Chicagoland Cadillac De) does not have any traffic and you have to compete with "chicago cadillac theater". If you do Google Adwords Keyword tool, you will see there is very little traffic for "Chicago Cadillac", so you need to move the primary keyword completely to the left (left justify the keyword phrase). May I suggest going to something like this for the home page: <title>Cadillac Dealer Chicago: Parts & Services on Deville Escalade Eldorado Seville - Chicagoland Cadillac</title> And something like this for the About page: <title>Chicagoland Cadillac: New, Certified PreOwned, Parts & Services</title> For all other pages, I would leave "Chicagoland Cadillac" off and focus on more important keywords. Also, check out http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=79812&query=meta+tags&topic=&type= Look at the way Google is recommending to use the "description". It works!
trosquin, is this for the Chicagoland Cadillac Web site in your signature? (By the way, I'm just west of Chi-town.) (I have some ideas that will differ significantly from what catanichsuggested, which is why I wanted to ask first.)
Thanks for the info but this is not the site in question....also this chicagoland site is less than a month old so it has nothing as far as links or anything SEO as of yet.
The site in question is not this one...but please I would love your input. I just want to know if it is better to have your site name in every single meta title or in a few or at least the landing/home page! Unicarshonda.com is the site i am referring to. But that is besides the point.
Okay, what I do is try to minimize the use of repeated keywords in my page titles and instead mix/match the ones I have so I can improve my rankings for the ones I do have (it's actually not that hard once you know for certain what the page's objective is). Not only that, but I'll also write the page title to be as compelling as possible by including a call to action to make people want to click the link to the page instead of the competition. Once that's done, I'll write a descriptive 160 character (or less - if I need more, I'll employ a cliffhanger) META description that accurately describes what the page is about while reinforcing the compelling call to action for those who may be reading the description in the search results. And yes, I do like to put the site's "title" in the page title, but at the end. Not only can it help with your optimization efforts, but it also gives people using screen readers and mobile devices the "benefit" of knowing they haven't left your site for another. If something can make my users' lives easier, chances are pretty darn good I'm going to use it. In your particular case, you appear to be targeting a specific part of California while the site appears to have something for everyone. What is the primary purpose of the site's home page? To get people to buy cars, service them, or buy parts for the cars?
I agree with some of the points posted in this thread. I would also like to add that Google likes as much unique content as possible whether it is in the body, description or title of the site. I would refrain from putting your company's name on every page. Rather, I would follow HowToMakeMyBlog.com's recommendation and use the following format: "Page title | Company name" Page Title = being the keyword you want to target Company name = fairly obvious. Good luck.