101 Signal series: The webpage title, golden triangel and long tail.

This article is first published on 101 signals of Quality articles on jan 04-06 by Brett

The Title is a users gateway to your page. It is the onramp that we all must get on (click) to reach any page listed on a SERP. If you get nothing else from this site or this series get this. The story of the page title, is the story of your page. Stop for just a sec here and think about this: every last bit of Traffic your site acquires through Search engines comes directly through the title. The user physically must click on your title to get to your site. The title is the on ramp to your site.

The difference between a guy that has been SEO'ing for 5 years and thinks he is successful because he hired a programmer to do his seo, and some one who just sold for untold millions to Network Solutions - is the difference between understanding how to write good page titles and not.

So it stands to reason, that the title is the single most important piece in this series. The more I have studied the all fabled page title over the last few weeks, the more I have come to believe that there are few who truly understand the power of a good title.

We will not be talking specially about paid advertising links on Yahoo, or Google AdWords. Although we can learn enormous amounts from that structure about clickability, that is an entirely different proposition than pure organic page titles.

I am in a unique position here in that a portion of my web training is in SEO, and another large portion is in forums. I get to see titles every day. I get to see the results of those titles. From pumping up a discussion to being a thread killer, I get to see what affect a change of a title has the direction of a conversation. That in turn has taught me what people click on and why people become engaged.

One of my all time favorite tests was to take a simple little thread titled, "Keywords in alt tags different?" and I changed it to "The last Update changed image tags?" The thread went from one response to over 50 by the next morning. Simply adding the word "update" to the title changed the entire quality of the thread. The new member that started that thread, went on to go to become a supporting member and a conference attendee. The simple change of a title, turned an otherwise lame thread into a killer question that resonated with people. That is not to say that every post or page title can be turned into an all star performer - there are topical limits everywhere.

Quick - how often do you look at a page title when you are actually on a page? The percentage must be the low single digits netwide. On the other hand, how often do you read that page title when listed in a SERP?

The Long Tail

As an SEO, I used to think writing a title was as simple as working in some choice keywords in the right location in the title. I wrote one of the first Excite algo crackers that I know of (1997). We figured out that the entire excite update system was based on nothing more than shifting the value of the Keyword in the title. All we had to do between updates, was to shift the title kw's left or right, and bingo. By that point, we had already determined the other 35 criteria for Ranking pages, and the algo was ours for more than a year. You could say that I got programmed into thinking that the title and keywords were everything. It has taken 8 years for me to unlearn that basic premise.

Todays titles are much more complex, and they certainly aren't as important as they were back then. As with all the 101 criteria, you are going to hear us mention that this item depends strongly on whether you are focusing on the Long Tail or not. So lets talk "long tail" for a minute and make sure we are in sync with the concept.

The term, the Long Tail comes from Wired editor-in-chief Chris Anderson, who authored the seminal article titled The Long Tail. The Long Tail is the accurate assessment that the sum of less frequent searches is greater than the sum of the top searches. To paraphrase Overture Rep Dan Boberg from our Boston conference in 2003, Four keywords or more, and you are in to their deep buy cycle - you are in the money.

The original usage of Long Tail in relation to search comes from one of the (warning: spammy page) Joe Kraus, cofounder at Excite.

Unfortunatly for us, all the writing about the long tail has been focused on the Search Engine perspective. The real story about the long tail involves Keyword Targeting by webmasters. Simply put, "nec desktop phones" will convert better than "desktop phones", "nec phones" or "nec desktop". It is simply the idea that the human search process is one of refinement. The broader searches are about education, and the longer searches are where people are on a mission. When people are search engine for "nec ds1000 phone systems", they are either looking for specific model info, or they are deep into a buy cycle. Our job as webmasters and conversion specialists, is to target that "long tail". As Dan said, it is where the money is at.

The chart of the Relative Importance of the Title at the right, shows my best guess at the importance of the title tag. As the number of Search Results goes down to the right, the relative importance of the title begins to increase. It is important that you get the concept of the title in relation to the long tail, because this is where the smaller website with less resources can still compete with the big web site and it's big resources.

The classic case to me is MP3.com. At one point in 2000, MP3.com ruled the engines for every keyword related to MP3. They rested on their winnings for two years and did little to no SEO for those two years. During that time, the head SEO for them told me that they didn't have to do any SEO because they were #1 for the big MP3 keyword and the super MP3 Download Keyword Phrase. While they were busy protecting "mp3", several other small sites started to win 2 and 3 keyword phrases that mp3.com didn't focus on. In the end, a group of small sites now dominate the mp3 long tail. I'd estimate those dozen long tail players take home 10k to 20k each per month in revenue because mp3.com gave it to them by forgetting about the long tail deep searches.

BLINK! Thin Slicing Search

Good friend Gord Hotchkiss up a Enquiro has been doing some more search engine behavior research. At Gords direction, Enquiro is probably most famous for last years search engine eye tracking study that discovered the famous golden triangle of user SERP attention.

I put a great deal of faith in Hotchkiss's work. We get so much hearsay, rumor, and opinion in this space, that whenever we get people doing hard core scientific research based on scientific methods in laboratory settings - we need to support it - it is the best information available. In preperation for this article, I talked to two search engines last week, both said Hotchkisses eye tracking study results were very accurate.

Hotchkiss wrote an article last summer about user behavior on the SERPS called Blink, Thin Slicing and the Art of Search Marketing. Gord used the Malcolm Tipping Point Gladwell Blink concept of Thin Slicing and applying it to user behavior on search engines. Gladwell, (who will keynote our spring conference in boston) says thin-slicing is the ability of our unconscious to find patterns in situations and people based on very narrow 'slices' of experience. Gord looked for answers to three common questions we all have about user search engine behavior:

• What do people click on?
  

• Why do people clink on it?
  

• What moves people to click?
  

Gord came up with some interesting hypotheses based on that research:

There is good news and bad news in that research finding. The good news is that now we know and the bad news is that now we know. Like Gladwells' detest for the word intuition, what we do on search results is not a visceral gut response mechanism. What we do is to think, to collalesce words, and "Blinks" of cognition, that lead us to a search result like a magnet. Some call it, the smell of information.

In talking with Gord while preping this article, Gord expanded on his research with a subtle but powerful distinction between the clicked results, and the also-rans. Gord says that one of the major components of a "click action" is the user sees the primary keyword or highlighted phrase bolded in the title of the page:

So those normal calls-to-action like CLICK HERE NOW, do scream out for attention, but it is quickly lost. The normal visceral gut response we have to some advertising is not at work here. That can only leave us as page authors back where we started with the title as our #1 advertisement for our page and ultimately, our site.

Real World Example

Look at the Google search over on the right for the keyword webmaster. We ranked #1 out of 614 million results for that keyword. Probably the highest ranking for a result I have had since we took mp3 on alta in 99. Looks like it should rock with referrals right?

When position 3 beats position 1:

Look at the difference a quality title can make. A quality title in the #3 position stomped a #1 with a lame title. Sure, there is more too it than just the title - the Description is also very important.

We don't' know yet what exactly makes a great title. There is no plugin, turn key formula for making a killer title. The perfect title lives somewhere in the balance of quality keyword placement to help with the ranking and the nauance of clickability.

The Keyword Phrase

The keyword sprinkle part of the title equation is fairly straight ahead. aka: drop it in there. You just can't build a quality title and page without the right phrase in there. I say phrase, because we are talking roi, Conversion rate, and long tail of search here. To do that, takes phrases and not just a keyword. The real simple rule for the kw's is to use the phrase in the title in the title amd reinforce that phrase in, metas, page Headings, and content near the top of the page. (We will get into keyword usage on the page, further on in the series)

http://www.useit.com/alertbox/980906.html

Length
Every engine is different in this regard. Google chops off the title display at 64. Up until the Florida update, Google would consider up to 120 characters for a title. They still consider upwards of 100, but the weight drops off significantly over 64.

Skimmers:
So for those still reading, let me say thanks for indulging us, because I would bet less than 50% of those that started reading this, have actually read everything. You will be able to determine that by the nature of some of the responses. There will be some that ask a question or make a comment about something we have already talked about here. I mention it, because this is near the same as people do on a search engine. (please don't quote this down the line)

Title Uses to Consider:

• Search Engine Results
  

• Link Text.
  

• Bookmarks.
  

• Did I mention Link Text? ;-)
  

• Email and Mailing list titles.
  

• Keep in mind how your kw might get bolded on the serp if it matches a search kw.
  

Things I have found:

• A question trumps a statement most of the time.
  I feel that this is mainly the case because people most often are looking for information. A question lines up well with their way of thinking. If your question matches theirs, they will believe the page has an answer.
  For more info: read the best guide on asking good questions.
  

• Avoid Tricky Calls to action:
  Click Here Now. often draw clicks, but the page ROI suffers enormously. It's a "trick click".
  

My personal title algo:

• Unique title.
  

• Keyword Phrase - min 4 keywords.
  

• Include at least 3 Stop Words (the, is, an, of).
  

• Keep the prime keyword as close to the beginning of the title as possible.
  

• Try to formulate a question or a strong statement.
  

• Always describe what the page is about.
  

Things NOT to do:

• use kw more than once in title.
  

• Do not use exclamation points or question marks - or any other punctuation in the title.
  

• no double title tags. All the engines have penalties now.
  

• No long titles.

Where To Practice Good Titles.

• Forums. Yep, that is a great place to test out "clickability".
  

• Email. Always create a good informative title for EVERY email. Never slack - do the work - it will pay rewards.
  

• Your own page. It should be the first thing you think of for you page, as it sets the tone for the entire page.
  

Worth A Read:

• Ebay, Writing a Good Title and Description:
  http://pages.ebay.com/help/sell/title_desc_ov.html
  

• Web Gorilla : Writing Better Web Page Titles:
  http://www.7nights.com/dkrprod/gwt_seven.php
  

• Microcontent: How to Write Headlines, Page Titles, and Subject Lines
  http://www.useit.com/alertbox/980906.html
  

• How To Ask Questions The Smart Way (thought provoking):
  http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/smart-questions.html
  

Those are my thoughts on the dubious title.

As with the rest of this series, I ask that you focus from your own experiences. What have you found to be true? What works for you? What have you found in your own work?

Other questions:
- what is the prime difference between titles for Organic or titles for pure PPC advertising?
- what is the balance between clickability and listings power?
- where do you practice title tracking at?
- how much can you play with a title before you poison your own work?

-brett