If I am optimizing for a keyword, lets say for a page on Jessica Alba, is it better to do something like Jessica Alba | Photos | News | Images or Jessica Alba Photos | Jessica Alba News | Jessica Alba Images for the title tag?
I would say the latter of the two, but you want your title to match as closely to what someone might type into a search engine to find you.
Great question. I would personally go with a hybrid of the two. Take your most important phrase and use that at first, followed by just the end of the phrases Jessica Alba Photos│News│Images I like the use of weird meta codes in titles...why do people not utilize the weird symbols..can they not be put in the code?
If you want people to find your site if they type in Jessica Alba I would say the following title tag is much better. Jessica Alba | Jessica Alba News and Images You dont want to repeat Jessica Alba to much and you do not want your title tag to be to long as it dilutes the effect each keyword has. If you repeat Jessica Alba more than a couple of times it could dilute the effect it has on ranking and at worse could be construed by Google as being a tiny bit spammy.
I totally agree with this. Don't forget to try and write for the user too, they can see if something looks spammy too, and write it compelling enough (along with the meta description) to encourage them to click through to your site.
IMO the first title is much better than the second one which says: Jessica Alba | Photos | News | Images Its only because it is advised not to repeat the same keywords many times in the same title. Alternatively you can use the following Title as well Jessica Alba in News | Jessica Alba Hot Photos and Images
You can also try something like Jessica Alba News, Photos and images. You have to see what exactly people are searching
Try the second one. Let it live for 6 weeks or so and see if SERPs position improves and traffic. Then give the other a go for a few weeks and see where your site ends up. Keep tweaking to see which works best.
If you want people to find your site if they type in Jessica Alba I would say the following title tag is much better. Jessica Alba | Jessica Alba News and Images Using like this you can manage the density... and your title not look like spammy
If you select the first choice, it may cause spam suspicion to Google, since keyword is repeated several times.
Jessica Alba Photos | Jessica Alba News | Jessica Alba Images This would be better then first one Regards Georgen Bowser
Neither of these would ever be viewed as spam by Google. There is absolutely nothing wrong with repeating "Jessica Alba" in the <title> 2-3 times... once for each keyword phrase. In fact, I would strongly suggest you do. Having "Jessica Alba | Photos | News | Images" as your <title> is not going to help you rank that well for "Jessica Alba" related terms. Every word in the <title> has the same density... 20%. I think this actually dilutes the <title>'s focus which should be "Jessica Alba" + some differentiator like "photos". I MUCH prefer "Jessica Alba Photos | Jessica Alba News | Jessica Alba Images" as a <title> over the first one. Personally, I don't think either is really all that good of a <title> unless this is a home page <title> for a site dedicated to Jessica Alba. I say this because it looks like this page is not focused enough... Trying to rank a single page for "Jessica Alba Photos/Images" as well as "Jessica Alba News" is not a good idea. Those should be two different pages IMO. If I were trying to rank for Jessica Alba phrases like these I would first take a look at Google insights to gain a little insight into what people are actually searching for in relation to Jessica Alba. If you did so you would see that far more people are searching for "jessica alba pics" and "jessica alba pictures" than are searching for "images" or "photos" of her. The most recent relative search volume according to Google Insights is: jessica alba pics - 82 jessica alba pictures - 46 jessica alba photos - 24 jessica alba images - 5 Then I would check the competion at Google to discover that each of the phrases have the following number of search results: jessica alba pics - 1,920,000 jessica alba pictures - 2,960,000 jessica alba photos - 3,940,000 jessica alba images - 51,000,000 WOW! Do you notice anything? The phrase that gets the highest search volume (jessica alba pictures) is the least competitive, easiest to rank for phrase. And the same holds true all the way down the list. Why even try to rank for "jessica alba images" which only gets a small amount of search volume and has 15-25 times more competition than the other phrases? I would be trying to rank for "jessica alba pics" FIRST (least competitive/most search volume), then "jessica alba pictures" SECOND (2nd least competitive, 2nd most search volume)... then "jessica alba photos" THIRD (3rd least competitive/3rd most search volume)... and those are exactly the phrases I would include in my <title> and the order in which they would appear. I didn't mention it above but I would also check singular and plural to see which gets most search volume and competition. Which you include in your <title>, <h1>, etc. DOES matter in how you rank. Google does NOT singular and plural versions of a noun as the same thing, otherwise you would get the same results regardless of whether you search for the singular or plural and you do not. I always look at search volume and competitiveness of both the singular and plural forms before deciding whether to include the singular the plural or both in a <title>. Assuming the competitiveness is roughly the same for both, then if the singular gets a LOT more search volume, my <title> will only include the singular. If the plural gets a LOT more search volume, my <title> will only include the plural. If the singular gets a little more or say double the plural in search volume, I might include them both but have the singular appear first in the <title>. Or if I have three very similar phrases, I might end up putting the singular in the first and 2nd keyword phrase of the <title> but make the 3rd keyword phrase use the plural form. I would do this kind of research above for every page related to Jessica before coming up with site structure, <titles>, and content related to Ms. Alba. Assuming your site is NOT dedicated to just Jessica Alba, I would probably design my site so that I have a Jessica Alba page with subpages for the pictures news, biography, movies, etc. so that I could have separate pages targeting each keyword phrase topic instead of trying to get a single page to rank for lots of topics related to her. My main Jessica Alba page might show a couple of pics, a video, spotlight her most recent movie, and a couple of recent news items about her with links to subpages that give more comprehensive lists of photos, videos, movies, news items, and biographies like: http://www.example.com/jessica-alba/ http://www.example.com/jessica-alba/pictures/ http://www.example.com/jessica-alba/videos/ http://www.example.com/jessica-alba/movies/ http://www.example.com/jessica-alba/news/ http://www.example.com/jessica-alba/biography/ My <titles> would likely be something like: <title>Jessica Alba</title> <title>Jessica Alba Pics - Jessica Alba Pictures - Jessica Alba Photos</title> <title>Jessica Alba Video - Jessica Alba Videos</title> <title>Jessica Alba Movie - Jessica Alba Movies</title> <title>Jessica Alba News</title> <title>Jessica Alba Biography</title> respectively. I think <title>Jessica Alba Pics - Jessica Alba Pictures - Jessica Alba Photos</title> is a great <title> from all perspectives. Note that "Jessica" has a 33% density, "Alba" has a 33% density, "Pics" has 11% (but is listed first so it's more important than "pictures" and "photos")... "Pictures" and "Photos" both have 11.1% density as well but are found in order of importance decending. Google knows through lexical semantic analysis and probably through a simple list of synonyms as well that "pics", "pictures", and "photos" have the virtually the same meaning. So pics/pictures/photos also have essentially a 33% keyword density from a semantic perspective.