Title Tag - Best Practices

[patrickmilligan]

I'm pretty new to seo but think I'm starting to get a decent grasp on it. One thing I'm really struggling with is how to organize the meta title tags on my website. I work in real estate and I'm noticing a lot of my local competitors that are ranking for the top keywords seem to using that particular keyword on every title tag within their website.

An example would be www.paranych.com. Many of his internal pages have the word "Edmonton Real Estate" in the meta title tag, yet his home page is the page that is ranking for that particular keyword. It doesn't seem logical to have every one of my pages featuring the same keyword, but there are many examples within my industry of this working.

Is the best practice with meta title tags to have your keyword on every title tag of your site or just the home page?

Thx, Barry

[William.Lau]

This may be that they do not know better or have limited resources. It doesn't matter what a competitor is doing as you can always do better.

More than often the reason is because that is the default value for their meta tags.

Meta descriptions and meta tags in general are for as you would say it "sales pitch". Meta data holds little to no weight in ranking as mentioned before.

[RebekahMay]

A lot of SEO clients we have are real estate agencies.  We always recommend that you diversify this information so as not to canibalize your own keywords.  We generally suggest location (such as Edmonton) and then other top keywords for your area, usually stuff like

Edmonton Real Estate

Edmonton Homes for Sale

Edmonton Property Listings

etc.

We also suggest that you really take advantage of specific location searches, so if you have a property listing page in a specific area, it is a good idea to include the zip code.  This is where keyword data provided usually fails and you need an intimate knowledge of your area/industry because people often perform searches based on yard signs they have seen - and there will be no keyword data for this.

[patrickmilligan]

I do realize that the meta description is more of your sales pitch that shows up in the serps but am still curious why my competition would use the same keyword in all of their title tags. Would this not diminish your ability the ability to rank on that keyword?

[dmccarthy]

There is <title>which is important both for ranking and is the headline used in the serps and then there is the <meta name="description" title="title that is display below the title in the serps"/> this is not a factor in the ranking algo, but is important as a creative.</p></title>

[William.Lau]

Yes, my answer was assuming yo uare talking about meta title tag.

[patrickmilligan]

Hi William, I am referring to the meta title tag. Sorry if that confused your answer. Would you answer be the same knowing this information?

[William.Lau]

This happens often because a lot of platforms that sites run don't allow you to manipulate every single page. It is sometimes automated.

However, most sites allow you to pick from pages and posts, which is usually what is most important. Best practice title tags are generally to create a good CTR. Title tags have really little to no weight on SEO.

Meta tags are more for CTR and attracting the right user.

Let's say you have evaluations of real estate, you target is not to sell real estate but to provide reviews. You would gear your meta tags towards evaluations and reviews and not buy and sell. Attracting the right user will give you better numbers and actual conversions. You don't want someone visiting your site if they have no chance of converting in the first place anyway.