Same title and keywords across entire site

[dsearchguy]

Hello,

I have been reading a lot of great posts here in the past few weeks. I am a long time Intranet developer,and now a first time Internet / SEO / designer type guy.

I develop all of my web sites using include files. Until now, it was standard to have the same <title>, and same set of keywords across an entire site.

Will that negatively effect my potential rankings? ...or would it just push everyone to a sites homepage ( which is what I really want in some cases ) ?

Thanks ....
d

[scottiecl]

Hi dsearchguy. Welcome! :hi:

The keywords tag doesn't really matter much to most search engines, some still use it but not weighted very highly.

The title tag is very important as it tells the search engine what the page is about. If your title tag has words that match the text on the page, you are more likely to be ranked well for that term.

Having the same title tag on every page doesn't drive people to your home page, it simply confuses the SE as to what your page is supposed to be about. It doesn't hurt anything, but it sure doesn't help.

A good idea is to pick one or two 2- to 3- keyword phrases to optimize each page for. Use those keywords in the title. keywords tag, and most importantly, in text on the page. If it makes sense to include them in an alt tag or a heading tag, do that as well. (Don't overdo keywords in alt tags or heading tags- considered to be spamming).

That is quick page optimization 101!

I use SSI and I always start my header file just after the description and keyword tags. If you use different stylesheets for different pages, you may want to start it after your stylesheet tag.

Hope that is helpful information~

[dsearchguy]

Thanks for the great info Scottie!

I will just pass the title as a parameter to the SSI.


....
d

[dsearchguy]

Can the title have commas ...

I'm working on an apartments page for a city called "MyCity"

I'm using keywords in my title :

Mycity apartments & Mycity Rentals for Mycity, Mystate




Does that look like a good start?
Will the comma and the ampersand throw things off?


Thanks,
....
d

[dinom]

mycity rentals for mycity

Not to keen on that myself, bit much. I don't think you get extra for having your keyword in the title more than once!

[dsearchguy]

Well, I guess you're right.

If I look at Google Adwords for "MyCity"

I see something like:
--
Mycity Mystate
MyCity Apartments
Mycity rentals
Mycity newspaper-name
MyCity colleges
etc ...
--

I was hoping to be specific and catch the top 3 I listed above.

[Kal]

Personally I don't include commas in my title tags as on some engines it may break up the phrases into separate keywords. Also, there is no need to repeat keywords more than once or twice in your title or META tags.