I-Search Tips #119: Brand Metrics

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                    SearchReturn Discussion List
             "Understanding Internet Search Technology"
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Moderator:                                          Published by:
Disa Johnson                                       SearchReturn
               http://www.searchreturn.com
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February 22, 2007                         SearchReturn Issue #119
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// -- ESSENTIAL TIPS -- //

            "Title Performance Metrics"
                        ~ Moderator Comment

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// -- ESSENTIAL TIPS -- //

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==> Title Performance Metrics

>>Do you have data showing improved performance when you removed
the brand name from the end of the title?  Or conversely, worse
performance after adding it?<<

Moderator Comment:  The short answer is yes but it's not worth
fully reprinting here.  I performed unique string experiments in
the past.  Suffice it to say that another place where SEOs go
awry is to assume their tests can give them highly accurate data
about optimization.

You can get informed of general trends, but ranking changes can
never give you the whole picture.  If you record a ranking for a
page, change one aspect to the SEO, track the ranking change, you
might draw a conclusion about the performance of a particular SEO
technique.

The ranking shift will completely mislead you if you neglect the
fact that in the interim a competitor may have appeared above you
or was removed that resulted in the shift.  Perhaps a series of
links (or just one important one) that previously counted in your
favor disappears or lacks indexing on an update.  All this
without refering to search engine algorithm changes!

Having said that, Paid Inclusion can improve the testing accuracy
since the guaranteed indexing and quick refresh cycles provide
you with a more accurate picture of what's going on.  To this
end, yes (with Yahoo! at least) adding a major brand at the front
of the title has generally given more traction with clicks.

If you add brand at the end, the click through can suffer and you
reduce the power of the keywords by adding to the limited
character count.  Since click through test results on brand is
generally independent of the search engine in question,
performance increases work across the board - Yahoo!, Google, MSN
and Ask.

 
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