Hello, this is my first new thread here. I love reading through these forums and I've found alot of information to think about when optimizing my site for search engines. I'm sure you've discussed this in various ways, but in searching the forums, I couldn't find the exact topic I'm looking for, so here goes. I'm trying to optimize my site, www*tubanews*com. According to my tracking software, most people find the site by searching for "tuba something" (tuba articles, tuba advice, tuba magazine, whatever...) so I'm trying to rank well for the word 'tuba.' I'm currently hovering around 20 in Google and 10 in MSN and Yahoo, but I'd love to be on the first page more often. I've been adding my site to directories using Tuba News (with a space) as the anchor text, thinking that the word Tuba in isolation will be picked up as a keyword, and I seem to be slowly climbing. My pagetitles are currently in this format: TubaNews.com - Topic So here's my question: Would it make sense to change my page titles to: Tuba(space) News - Topic One more for ya: My front page title changes depending on the current issue of my ezine, would it be better practice to keep a static title? It's Currently titled TubaNews.com - Special Issue: Frankfurt Musikmesse 2005, last month it was TubaNews.com Issue 12 - April, 2005 Also, I know my meta tags are a wreck, should I shorten the keywords and description fields or are meta tags obsolete. Thanks for any advice and I'm sorry if this is really basic information that has already been hashed and re-hashed. -Rose
Yes that makes good sense. You will want the most exact match with what they're searching for as possible. No point in having the URL in the title. It's for keywords. Meta tags should be used (description and keywords) but don't put too much time into it. But do make sure they are unique (inc the title) to each page and make sure the keywords actually appear in the body of the page.
Look through your stats package and i.) Note down exactly which phrases your site shows up on. ii.) Use Shawns keyword suggestions http://www.digitalpoint.com/tools/suggestion/?keywords=tuba&country=uk Begin optimization of your site using the keywords you collected
My recommendation would be to lose the word News too. I am assuming you are trying to establish a standard for all inner pages. Depending on how keyword oriented your Topics are. I would go with either: Topic OR Tuba Topic
Yes I would use Tuba News and not even mention the .com I would also take care that the back links you have, have a variety of related anchor text. So "Tuba News and Tuba Players" and "Tuba Sheet Music an News" and that sort of anchors. Turn titles around, Tubu Sheet Music from Tuba News, most important in front...
It's just like writing a news article. The who, what, where, when in the first sentence. Look at a google listing. It's what? 10 words? Most are the Title, description, or first line of the first paragraph. You need to get your message across in the length of those displays. Longer is better I'm sure, but the first 10 words are the work horses.
At the very least, it should be 'Tuba News' and nothing else. The problem there is that all of your page titles will be the same if you don't make them each unique which I highly recommend that you do. Make them each unique to the content and include 'tuba' and the other keywords people are finding you by.
Thank you for these informative responses! Our actual #1 search phrase is Tuba News or TubaNews.com, so there's a serious name recognition and word of mouth thing going on. Therefore, I want to keep that site recognition in the page titles for the SERPS, plus I'm concerned about having spammy titles. Because in the end, my site is'nt for Adsense or anything like that, it's for readers (and we'll be selling some things in the future) Maybe a good solution would go a little something like this: Tuba Articles - Reviews - from TubaNews.com Tuba Articles - Pedagogical Articles - from TubaNews.com Tuba Downloads - Sheet Music - from TubaNews.com because those are quite user friendly. Another thing is, I'd like to start being ranked for the word Euphonium, which is an instrument closely related to the Tuba. For that, I could start making special categories for Euphonium-related content that would show up my dynamic titles: Tuba Articles - Euphonium - from TubaNews.com Tuba Downloads - Euphonium - from TubaNews.com or better yet, code my dynamic titles using if statements so they say Euphonium Downloads - Sheet Music - from TubaNews.com Is this line of thinking on the right track? I DON'T want to turn off my internet un-savvy readers.
I think you have got it. But don't forget those anchors in your links from other sites... It is very well possible that even, when you don't carry certain words in the title of your page, but just ON the page, with the right anchor you will rank high for these keyphrases....
Yep, I'm working hard to vary the anchor text on incoming links when I have a chance, though when "tuba" people link to us, the anchor is usually just TubaNews.com. I've done things like Tuba News Tuba Magazine Tuba and Euphonium News Tuba Articles and Reviews... Re: Titles Will a major page title change be noticed by Google as a negative thing? Should I gradually change them over the course of a few weeks. Googlebot is on my site almost every day, so it will get picked up in chunks.
You could change the title whenever you want. GOogle sees it wrong when url's are changed. Content and titles are Ok. It might even help, as google might see changes in the site.
Will do, next time I'm in code mode...and I'll let you know if it makes a difference. Right now I'm busily writing articles!
Yup, I don't think a title update will cause problems... BTW I invite you to post your site in the site review section, see what peole have to say....
Ok I got ambitious, and I think I changed almost every page title on the site (dynamically of course), here are some changes: TubaNews.com - Content Archives to Tuba and Euphonium Articles from TubaNews.com TubaNews.com Article: Light the Fire! to Tuba and Euphonium Article: Light the Fire! from TubaNews.com TubaNews.com - Player Profile - Smith, John to Tuba Player Profile: Smith, John from TubaNews.com or Euphonium Player Profile: Smith, John from TubaNews.com depending on Instrument, which is cool because people tend to search for John Smith Euphonium, depending on what they play (I'm proud to have thought of that one) TubaNews.com - Tuba/Euphonium Discussion Forums to Tuba and Euphonium Discusion Forums from TubaNews.com TubaNews.com - Web Links to Tuba and Euphonium Links from TubaNews.com Let's see if I get some changes! I'm especially curious if my ranking for "Euphonium" will go up, because I have very few incoming links that say Euphonium at the moment.
Ok, my new page titles are in the indexes and we're on the move, lets see if it's a fluke! Google is up 3 to 15 MSN is up 3 to 8 (even though they're only about 2% of my search engine traffic)
Try and put the page's description first, in title, and some other ... Like : Content Archives - Tuba and Euphonium Articles - TubaNews Light the Fire! - Tuba and Euphonium Articles - TubaNews
Sorry to dig up a dead thread, but I think alot of users could benefit from this discussion. Yahoo LOVED these page titles. Note: In a more competitive field you probably will not see results this dramatic. It's about two weeks after I started optimizing my keywords in this manner and it seems to be working - please look at this graph from DP's keyword tracker. I have about 15 graphs that look like this, all pages/sections optimized for products. (Too bad I'm not selling them yet - maybe down the road if I can keep these positions) I used dynamic titles to do the following: The Whole Section is called Tuba and Euphonium Database from TubaNews.com a sub category page title looks like this: Hirsbrunner Tubas and Euphoniums from TubaNews.com and an individual instrument page looks like this Hirsbrunner: Tuba Model HBS 290 / HB-1 from TubaNews.com