Page Title for SEM

Keywords: Place Keywords in Title

The title should contain keywords relating to the page and, in particular, to keywords most likely entered in search engines by those who are potential visitors to a site.  In most cases keywords should be in the form of a string of words or a phrase rather than single words.  Keyword phrases hold a higher potential for bringing qualified customers to a site since the more detailed a person is in entering a phrase, the more likely they are to be truly interested in the topic of their search.  For example, a search engine user entering the keywords “techniques for branding consumer products” is likely to be more interested in that topic than someone who simply enters the search term “branding.”

When it comes to placing keywords in the page title, a major mistake of many websites is to use terminology that may be familiar to employees of the website (e.g., industry lingo, acronyms) but do not match the search terms users enter when searching.  An example that we learned at KnowThis.com proves this point.  When we first launched the site in 1998 we referred to a major Topic Area as “Marketing Research” mainly because this is how most marketing textbooks refer to research in marketing.  However, around 1999, Overture (now owned by Yahoo) released a keyword selector tool that allows website marketers to see how many times keywords were entered into their search engine during a previous month.  We were surprised to see searchers are much more likely to use the phrase “market research” as part of the search string.  In fact, we tried this comparison again recently and found that search engine users are 12 times more likely to enter a keyword search using the phrase “market research” than the phrase “marketing research.”  The point here is that while it may be fine to include industry terminology, the page title should also reflect terms used by the average customer.

One last point, while placing keywords in the page title is necessary, it is wise not to go overboard by using the same keyword phrase multiple times in the same page title.  Instead, include in the page title two or three different phrases that describe what the page is about.  Otherwise search engines may believe the site is attempting to trick the search engine (i.e., spam) which may result in the website being penalized by search engines.