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Re: Good page titles - friendly SEO

for

From: Steven Henderson
Date: Jan 20, 2010 3:45AM

I totally agree about taking the domain name or company name into account,
Chuck. I generally do this for familiar searches however, where I don't have
sufficient experience to choose one over another using those criteria.

That said, I actually do prefer to see a company name in a title for the
same reasons, but generally if it is company I am not familiar with.
Otherwise, I find myself manually removing the company name from bookmarks
that I make from a website regularly (likely because I will have a folder
named accordingly, anyways). I particularly use domains to filter results
that I will never click on, such as those annoying listing directories
(particularly the ones that dynamically capture your search query to appear
relatively useful) ... who wants to return a search listing from a search
listing? Kinda defeats the point .... thankfully, once you become familiar
with the main ones, you can dismiss them in an instant. I would prefer them
not to be listed at all though.

Steven











-----Original Message-----
From: <EMAIL REMOVED>
[mailto: <EMAIL REMOVED> ] On Behalf Of
<EMAIL REMOVED>
Sent: 20 January 2010 10:28
To: WebAIM Discussion List
Subject: Re: [WebAIM] Good page titles - friendly SEO

I actually prefer the name of the company or web site in title as if I
bookmark the page or choose to go there I want to know whose site it is.
There are some companies that I don't patronize for political reasons and I
will most likely look at the web address to ascertain the domain name of the

site or what company it belongs to.
Chuck
----- Original Message -----
From: "Steven Henderson" < <EMAIL REMOVED> >
To: "'WebAIM Discussion List'" < <EMAIL REMOVED> >
Sent: Wednesday, January 20, 2010 1:55 AM
Subject: Re: [WebAIM] Good page titles - friendly SEO


> Hope people don't mind me bringing up a previous post, but I was
> interested
> in what Geof Collis was saying about using search engines, particularly
> the
> following:
>
> "Personally long titles don't bother me as a screen reader, the more
> descriptive the better and I really don't need any company names
> cluttering
> up the beginning of it, its easy enough to find out the company's name
> from
> the site if I need to."
>
> "When I get to the page I start with my JAWS heading commands, if I cant
> find it that way then I use the on screen find function, type in some
> words
> that were relevant and go from there."
>
> If a page title is giving a page most of it's SERP weight, as opposed to
> the
> page content or external reference, then I can see how on many occasions
> the
> SEO developer is going to have a tough job attracting click-through
> against
> competitors who's titles can be more attractive thanks to the lower SERP
> weight of the page title itself.
>
> This is where I am getting frustrated with the page title. I use the page
> title a lot for saving pages and bookmarks (I recall somebody else
> mentioning this point too - apologies for not recalling who it was) so am
> really annoyed at how in most cases, I will need to compromise the page
> title because of client's expectations of the page title in SEO.
>
> For example,
>
> Searching for 'vintage wine' in Google returns vintagewinegifts.co.uk as
> the
> first result. It happens to have a horrible page title: "Vintage wine
> gifts.
> Fine & Rare wine gifts. vintage wine, port, champagne, cognac, Armagnac".
>
> I myself wouldn't want to click on it personally, even if it is the
> highest
> ranking SEO result. Great for SERP, but a monster of a page title in my
> browser bookmarks or history. However, antique-wine.com is second in the
> SERP and comes across considerably more appealing and makes me want to
> click
> it, using the title: "The Antique Wine Company".
>
> Surprise, the page title matches just one of the SEO keywords, likely due
> to
> other on-page or external SEO weight, but something I can definitely
> bookmark, and more likely candidate to persue.
>
> Am I being too picky? Do I undervalue the SERP description because of a
> badly received SERP title? Do I have to put up with it, because my client
> website requires that god-awful SEO title?
>
> I am very interested in people's comments on my ranting.
>
> Steven
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> At 08:47 AM 10/14/2009, you wrote:
>>Hi Geof,
>>
>>When you say you 'like the title to match the content heading' do you
>>actually find that to be the case of most websites? As I don't recall that
>>to be the case and am presently of the opinion that would be duplicate
>>content (in so far as sifting through all the other content on a given
> page,
>>that also wants my attention).
>>
>>In your case, if I were to place the main heading (which is perhaps
>>'similar' to the page title) at the top of the page, would it really be
>>inconvenient that it differ from the title? And what if I place a few
>>quick
>>links above that too, one of which linked to the main content? In the case
>>of a heading being identical to the page title, would you not prefer that
>>there was no heading and could get straight to the main content directly
>>(effectively treating the page title as your page heading)?
>>
>>
>>Steven
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>-----Original Message-----
>>From: <EMAIL REMOVED>
>>[mailto: <EMAIL REMOVED> ] On Behalf Of Geof Collis
>>Sent: 13 October 2009 16:25
>>To: WebAIM Discussion List
>>Subject: Re: [WebAIM] Good page titles - friendly SEO
>>
>>
>>
>>At 05:31 AM 10/13/2009, you wrote:
>> >I'm interested in people's feedback on page titles and how when written
> for
>> >SEO rankings, affect usability ... my humble opinion is that high
>> >ranking
>> >page titles are generally too long and unfriendly for me as a visual
> user,
>> >and wonder if this is even more of a problem for the visually impaired
>> >or
>> >blind user.
>>
>>Hi Steven
>>
>>Personally long titles dont botehr me as a screen reader, the more
>>descriptive the better and I really dont need any company names
>>cluttering up the beginning of it, its easy enough to find out the
>>company's name from the site if I need to.
>>
>>Perhaps its just me but when I search I like the title to
>>match the content heading it speeds things up for me. When I find
>>the search item that best describes what I searched for I want to go
>>to the site and hit the heading tab until I get the corresponding text.
>>
>>cheers
>>
>>Geof
>>
>>
>>Editor
>>Accessibility News
>>www.accessibilitynews.ca
>>Accessibility News International
>>www.accessibilitynewsinternational.com
>>
>>
>>