Title Tag - Waste of Time? I think so....

I was reading this seo article at SEOmoz, here. They apparently asked a panel of "All knowing SEO Wizards" some questions, and had them rate the relevance of the topic to organic seo.

The first one in the list - Keyword Use In Title Tag

Just about every single one of 'em is all "OMFG Dude!!! You GOTTA have that. It's the 2007 ShizNIT in a can! I am f____ 733t baby!!!!"

Oh really?

Anyone care to explain to me why 40% of the top ten in my sector DON'T have the keyword in the title? Also note that a couple don't have the term at the beginning of the title like they 'claim' you need to do, and a few even have it broken up. Heck, theres a guy there right now that doesn't even have the term on THE ENTIRE PAGE.

Is this a problem with Google? I say 'No'. The search results were completely relevant. I think this has more to do with a bunch of blow hards using smoke and mirrors to hide their 'secret sauce' so to speak.

/rant

 

i dont believe that title is not important. in my opinion, it's the most important tag on your site

 

I'm leaning in another direction actually.

Remember when this whole LSI thing came out, then the PaiR system (er... whatever all that junk is).

Shortly after that time, I happen to be hanging out in my sector at a forum. And this post came along by some random schmo (first and last post) about this and that, blah blah blah.

Well, there were NO links in the post. But I did know for fact that the post for SEO driven (otherwise the guy would've had at least one more post, probably 10 according to his enthusiasm). But tucked away, in the middle of all the text, was the company brand name, and maybe two instances of the keyword I was targeting. Again... there were no links.

Few months later, that company is #3.... from absolutely no where, and does NOT have the keyword in their domain name, or more importantly, the title.

Leads me to believe that 'brand name' or possibly 'domain name', recognition is more important than onpage factors.

Heck, here's another one - Key in Guitars. Gibson and Fender show up in the list, but they don't have Guitars in the title. But we all know it's brand name recognition. Think about it - There's probably dozens of articles, blog posts, forum posts/questions, and retail sites that say, at some point "Fender guitars", "Gibson guitars", etc.... and none of 'em are links.

G was able to recognize the name of the company and what it's primary product base is. Makes total sense, and is probably, in computer terms, ancient algo engineering history.

Just saying... at this point in the game, I think the on-page optimization stuff has very little weight in comparison to name recognition, or terms that closely relate to the given search term (perfect example was the guy that didn't even have the term on the page)

/two cents

 

"Anyone care to explain to me why 40% of the top ten in my sector DON'T have the keyword in the title? Also note that a couple don't have the term at the beginning of the title like they 'claim' you need to do, and a few even have it broken up. Heck, theres a guy there right now that doesn't even have the term on THE ENTIRE PAGE."

Hi

I would imagine that they are using many oneway backlinks from relevant, high ranking sites, using the correct keyword anchor text for their market sector.

 

I will stand behind the title tag carrying heavy weight in on-site seo

 

So 60% do?

What happens if the 40% that are not optimizing on page content get smart and do on page optimizations? Perhaps they dominate the top 4 spots.

There is a limit to how much weight on-page factors can affect your rankings, but they are still helpful. The title tag may be the most important single factor for any given page when considering just on page factors IMO.

 

Regardless of how much it effects rankings. The SERP viewers are more likely to click the website that has the keyword in its title.

 

It definitely doesn't hurt to have keywords in your title tag. If you really don't want it there, don't put it there. There are obvious things that are pretty standard for basic SEO. They will always remain the same. The Hilltop Report is worth a read if you haven't read it.

 

Keyword in Titles of pages will give proper Keyword Weight and Keyword Keyword Prominence ie Keyword positions in the area, Number of words in the keyword, and Total number of words in the area .. i prefer best place to put Keywords is to start of Titles

 

Meta title tag is really important IMO and is a contributing factor in getting me regular visitors to my blog.

 

Same here, Title is not only for bot but also for a visitor.

 

Of course it's not a waste of time.
It's one of the factors that have impact on your rankings.

 

The title tag is very important, especially if you have a high number of competitors.

You might not need a relevant keyword title tag if you have 5,000 PR 9 links with optimised anchor text to your site, but that doesn't mean it's still not important.

Not everyone has that, so if your site has a few links, then you need to optimise your site the best you can.

 

IMO Title tag is the most important part of onpage optimization. Google shows title of the site in SERP's and people will click your site if they see the keyword on your title.
So, my vote is for title and it is very important.

 

I think as I have read in many SEO books. Title tag is the most important part of the website. It give the weitage to the keywords.

 

The majority of us are saying that title tag is really important, its true.
IMO, the most important on page optimization tip is using keyword rich title tag. And company name is not essential in the title tag.

 

It's a very important factor, it can increase your positions in search engines by a great deal. It won't kill you to put some keywords in your title.

 

You can't look at one factor and say it is the most important, without it you'd be nowhere. SEs take a combination of onpage and off page factors into account when determining SERPs. The <title> tag is an important one that is probably weighted quite highly, but one title tag might not weigh as much as 1,000 backlinks with the keyword in the anchor text. You can ignore the title tag but then you'd need to do more SEO in other areas.

If the title tag was the begin all and end all of SEO then we wouldn't need SEO, just a well written title tag, but we would not rank well for a variety of related keywords that we can't cram into the title tag without making it look spammy.

 

LOL newb...

Did you consider that maybe these sites are just way more trusted by google and therefore google ranks them higher. Well established/trusted sites rank for generic keywords and not only just those that they have in their title tag.

 

Its important but you can dominate the SERPs without it. In my post the other day i showed i ranked page 1 for "SEO Company" and "internet design company" without the term in the title, metas, H tags, bold and just one instance of the keyphrases on the page.

I was getting alot of hits because amongst the wall to wall SEO title tags, my "Home" stood out like a sore thumb

But it does have importance, so you may as well add it.