March 25, 2010 -- © 2010 Right Results Consulting LLC

A few days ago I was trying to discover why the competition is beating my client off the first page of Google rankings. A trusted friend of mine recently remarked that she doesn't use many SEO tools anymore because it just isn't necessary. What she says is that search engines tell you volumes about ranking simply by looking at search results. To keep it simple, let's just focus on page titles.

Somehow, I got into a debate with my client about whether or not it is important if your target keyword appears in page titles. She insisted that her research showed that this simply isn't true. Rather than argue the point, I kept my true thoughts to myself and responded that I'd take the time to see for myself. This is a really good case which shows how inadequate words alone are for communicating information. Since, the need for inclusion of keywords in page titles is so incredibly obvious to me. Surely, it was the words I was using in my attempt to persuade which were at fault.

The very first thing to learn about this is that all marketing channels are not created equal. When you are looking at search results, it matters whether the marketing channel is highly competitive or not. It most cases, a channel is simply not competitive enough to show off the importance of a particular "on page" optimization factor. However, if you look at a marketing channel which has click value of more than one million dollars per quarter, that is another matter. With click cost in this range, a business targeting the first page of Google results can afford to purchase every "on page optimization" advantage.

Have a look at my client's keyword and see how her competitors use it in their page titles. I won't tell you the keyword; why not discover it yourself? Click Here

So, does your competition place important keywords in their page titles?  Maybe they do and maybe they don't. But, the real question is "should you?" and I say "yes".

Best Regards,
Charles