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Re: Good page titles - friendly SEO

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From: Steven Henderson
Date: Jan 20, 2010 5:00AM

I think I have read the same article, Simius.

In principal I agree with the methods discussed, but in the case of the
following listing for 'womens clothing london', how is a business to compete
on equal application of the page title if they appear in the top 5 SERPs
with equal SEM and SEO?

1. womens clothing in street in London, girlie shop
2. The Lady in a hat, Street in London
3. Burtons | Women's Clothing, Street in London
4. Clothing > Women | Next, Street in London
5. Anne Summers

The above is how a typical SERP listing could look without the clutter of
meta descriptions or other data ... not really useful if the value of brands
is taken out of the equation. Often a high ranking page's title is just the
brand name, so serves little value as a functional title. That said, when
one sees so many equally ranking and descriptive SERPs, choosing one over
another is even more problematic.

In the magazine world, people either look for a known brand and pick it up,
or are attracted to something that stands out from the crowd. Why is it that
the SERP titles are being hyped to be a particular way, when in practice,
when everyone does it nobody actually stands out? Shouldn't a good title in
fact 'STAND OUT', particularly where brand is not an attractive keyword?
Therefore making it simply difficult to keep up with the competition, thus
most people are sucking up the over-crowded consensus of what a title should
be? Rather than actively keeping it competitive, perhaps for the fear that
it will not rank as highly?

Maybe I am just seeing too much into something that is perhaps unimportant?
Although if we agree that a page title isn't accountable for the SERP rank,
then perhaps once a page has a good rank we must then make efforts to ensure
that the title stands out? Thus begging the question of why conformance is
important at all?

Steven