----------------------------------------------------------------- SearchReturn Discussion List "Understanding Internet Search Technology" ----------------------------------------------------------------- Moderator: Published by: Disa Johnson SearchReturn http://www.searchreturn.com ----------------------------------------------------------------- February 01, 2007 SearchReturn Issue #113 ----------------------------------------------------------------- SEND POSTS: ----------------------------------------------------------------- Refer a friend: http://www.searchreturn.com/subscribe.shtml ----------------------------------------------------------------- .....IN THIS DIGEST..... Switching gears a little, we at SearchReturn want to reward you for your loyal readership with the latest thinking and essential advice from the brightest minds in the world of search. Our aim is to make your membership useful, (like what I-Search was). I- Search was a valued resource that we want to see again. To best accomplish this, we plan to begin publishing informative texts, tips and more comments to the list. Let us know what you think! ----------------------------------------------------------------- // -- ESSENTIAL TIPS -- // ----------------------------------------------------------------- ==> Title Length Essentials: Titles are the natural place for us to begin. A lot has been already published by practitioners about writing titles, their length and what to do to optimize them for search engines. This is because one of the single most valuable things you can do to improve your state of affairs with search engines is to write excellent titles. The reason titles are so important has to do not only with search engines, but that titles are used by several applications for a variety of purposes. By authoring excellent titles, you stand to gain valuable search engine rankings, and simultaneously influence these other uses of the text. Titles have limits on length and they have prime word positions that you can calculate as you go. Luckily, the length of a well- written title is short enough that it doesn't take a tremendous amount time to write them once you get the feel for them. This is helpful because you want to write unique and specific titles for every important page. Social media marketers also stand to gain from writing excellent titles. It isn't enough to create something worthy of social media marketing alone if you limit the audience through poorly written titles. Users can encounter trouble distinguishing your listing among the noise in del.icio.us or even YouTube unless you write well. Titles are key to your success with search engines, and taking care to write good titles will be rewarding elsewhere. Do you have success with words that appear at the end of the string in a lengthy title? Your success may be more attributable to links and other factors, even when text at the end of some lengthy titles aren't wholly ignored by search engines. Avoid assuming a keyword at the end of a lengthy title is the reason a given page ranks for that keyword. You will find shorter titles have more ranking power. Figure out the best length for a title by looking at what applications use them. Early versions of browser software such as Netscape originally displayed only the first 62 characters of the title. Newer versions display more but the old 62 character limit is still instructive for us today. Since search engines are a big concern here, calculate how much space search engines display to users at common browser resolution settings. In a recent interview, Melissa Meyer revealed that Google expends considerable energy making sure their SERPs display nicely at 800x600, which limits the character count of titles at less than 70. Yahoo! Trusted Feed, a form of paid inclusion, has a requirement that titles fit that same character count limit. Why should we care if titles are longer than what displays? The answer lies in the logic that search engines want users to notice the words used in search. They go to great lengths to do so. For example, they use bold typeface where search words appear in the listings. This is done intentionally to assist the user in making a choice from among the results. Note that in search listings titles are shortened using an ellipse (...) as the total character count begins to exceed the 70 limit. Search engines favor displaying search words to users for the purpose of helping them choose among listings, so they naturally increase the weight for ranking pages where search terms will be present. Search engines also are very aware of the character count limit in use with other applications that use titles, namely browser software and the operating system. This all means that words appearing in the first 65 characters (including spaces) of the title are going to get special ranking power. What is so important about the title anyway? Search engines know that important applications, including the browser and operating system use titles. They also are very aware that coding tricks will not allow webmasters to hide title text. Webmasters have incentive to write titles properly and cannot stuff keywords using tricks. That adds up to quite a compelling case for search engine designers to give extra weight to text found in titles. The last thought on title length is that shorter titles will give your individual terms additional strength. A title that uses a large percentage of the title boundary is one that is at least 50 characters in length. If the page content is focused, you may require fewer than 50 characters to retain the natural quality and depth of coverage a good title demands. If so, the power behind each word is increased relative to the drop in character count. Aim for between 50 and 64 or 65 characters for a full title, and remember less is more. Before you decide to edit your titles on this basic advice, be sure to know that we have not yet covered the quality of the writing. Trying to stuff keywords - even with a short title - is a mistake. Next we'll have a look at special spaces inside the title. As you might suspect by now, there is much more to writing excellent titles than simply including keywords within the character limit. ----------------------------------------------------------------- Stay Tuned. Got feedback?: http://www.searchreturn.com/feedback.shtml Archives: http://www.searchreturn.com/digest-archive.shtml Alternate formats: http://www.searchreturn.com/info-formats.shtml Manage Subscriptions: http://www.searchreturn.com/help/manage-subs.shtml Problems unsubscribing? Contact the postmaster: mailto:postmaster@searchreturn.com Information on how to sponsor this publication: http://www.searchreturn.com/help/advertise.shtml Published by SearchReturn http://www.searchreturn.com Website Membership: http://www.searchreturn.com/register.shtml The contents of the digest do not necessarily reflect the opinions of SearchReturn or Disa Johnson. SearchReturn and Disa Johnson make no warranties, either expressed or implied, about the truth or accuracy of the contents of the SearchReturn Digest. Copyright 2007 Disa Johnson. All Rights Reserved. -----------------------------------------------------------------