TITLE questions

[NazaretH]

[Moved from Google forum to the more appropriate Title/Meta forum. - Jill]

Our current title is:

Online Personals and Dating Services Network - LoveCompass.

We have great positions for "Online Personals" , "Dating Services" , and "Online Dating Services".

Now we would like to tweak our title a bit and change backlinks campaign to both keep our abovementioned positions and do better with "Online Dating" and possibly "Dating Singles".

What id the best title for us then? Is there any difference in making it within 65 letters or more? Should we avoid "and" , "&" and commas? Is it a good idea to make it from keywords only no matter what it looks like for a visitor? Maybe we make first 65 letters with keywords only and then add " - LoveCompass", or maybe this may depriciate keywords importance? Should we kick out "Network" word? Words repeated twice within a title - problem or not?

we are thinking of smth like this:

1. Online Dating Services & Online Personals Network - LoveCompass
2. Online Dating Services, Online Personals, Dating Singles - LoveCompass
3. Online Dating Services Online Personals Dating Singles - LoveCompass
4. Online Dating Services Online Personals Free Dating Singles Ads

Keep in mind that we both want to keep our "online personals" and "dating services"positions and improve "online dating" and "dating singles" positions.

Please help :hi:

[Advisor]

Sounds like you want to play with fire and possibly ruin a good thing!

Why not use all the other pages of your site to target these other keywords? Remember, your main page is only one page. You've done a great job with it, why mess that up when you don't have to?

Jill

[NazaretH]

Don't want to play with fire really, that's why I am trying to research it first.

All we want is a slight modification to raise for "Online Dating" and possibly "dating singles" . We can work on it with anchor in text only, but why not tweak title a bit? Major thing is that we want to have "Online" and "Dating" closer and maybe get rid of "and".

Why not use all the other pages of your site to target these other keywords?
Yes we try to optimize all other pages also and target many keywords and start getting good traffic for them. But "Online Dating" is a competative keyphrase and it needs many backlinks to be in TOP10, possibly even more than we got for "Online Personals" and "Dating Services". We will have hard time trying to get links to other pages except for the frontpage. We sure will have some, but it's almost impossible for that competative word.

BTW, is there a way to figure out what should be an approximate traffic rate with Google positions #2 for "Online Personals" and #5 for "DatingServices"? We get about 100 visitors a day for them but we thought it must give more. Any advise?

[ihelpyou]

'Online Personals' is together and at the start right now in your title tag. It has improved your chances greatly on that term. Anything you do with the title now that changes that will surely drop you for the term. You cannot simply tweak the title and expect to keep the same positions you have now.

Do as Jill says, or simply make a consciencious choice and decide which couple of keyphrases you 'will' target on that front page. You can't have them all. :)

For the record:

Online Dating Services - Online Personals

Would be the best chance you would have. I would certainly drop your biz name from the title as you should come up first on that no matter what you do with the title.

[NazaretH]

Thanks a lot,

I think we'll try "Online Dating Services - Online Personals" then. I hope that since we will still have "Online Personals" in and we'll keep getting links with this anchor, we won't loose this phrase rankings. On the same hand we may do better with "Dating Services" and sure with "Online Dating" then. I assume that sinse you suggest this title as a shorter one, it is not a good idea to plase any more kywords in it. Ok we will try to improve our positions for other keywords with backlings then. Thanks.

[Advisor]

Online Personals - Dating Singles - Online Dating Services

This gives you:

online personals
dating singles
online dating services
online dating
dating services
personals dating
singles online

Of course, I can't really create a title tag without looking at your copy, but this would be assuming that you have at least 250 words of text that is extremely focused on those phrases.

Jill

[NazaretH]

Thank you! Your input is very appriciated. Now it's time for hard work!

[NazaretH]

Ok, looks like we are going to go with smth like this:

http://www.lovecompass.com/try/temp3.htm

One H1 tag
Five H2 tags
Six H3 tags

About 400 words of plain text and about 200 words within links.

Please review this URL. Did I implement your advise correctly?
Thanks

[Advisor]

I would worry that all those links would actually hurt rather than help. There's a point where one can overdo things...

Jill

[NazaretH]

I see. But most of the links are internal links - Directory. Nothing different from, say, DMOZ or JoeAnt structure, so why could they heart? I didn't add any new links in the new version, and the old version seem to do pretty well - got #2 for "online personals" and #5 for "dating services" and PR5.

[Webmaster T]

hmmm:
online personals : online dating services for dating singles.

I would assume LoveCompass shouldn't need to be in the the title, put whatever term your targeting most in front of the colon;)

off the top of my head;)

[NazaretH]

Thank you a lot Webmaster T :hi:

[Cavemptr]

Originally posted by NazaretH


BTW, is there a way to figure out what should be an approximate traffic rate with Google positions #2 for "Online Personals" and #5 for "DatingServices"? We get about 100 visitors a day for them but we thought it must give more. Any advise?

Here is the approximate daily traffic in Google for these keyword phrases:

online personals 182
dating singles 42
online dating services 112
online dating 666
dating services 893
personals dating 16
singles online 21

Whether or not you are getting your "fair share" I don't know, but this will give you a better idea of the big picture.

Don

[Webmaster T]

Originally posted by Cavemptr
[B]Here is the approximate daily traffic in Google for these keyword phrases:

online personals 182
dating singles 42
online dating services 112
online dating 666
dating services 893
personals dating 16
singles online 21 Yes I did a check of Overture as well and it shows the same thing his Main term is dating services online personals or personals pales by a long shot. The breakdown would actually be pretty close to those Google figures. Did he say he was using wordtracker?

[NazaretH]

Thanks a lot for this report. Looks like I will need to subscribe to use wordtracker also...

So as I assume, the variant proposed by Jill is the best one -

Online Personals - Dating Singles - Online Dating Services

And if we do well with link we may get up to 2000 visitors a day for compinations of these terms when we rank high for them.

Or maybe, since it is good for the main phrase to go first, we should better change it to

Online Dating Services - Online Personals - Dating Singles

(this one breaks "singles online", but it doesn't give a lot as we see). Comments? Maybe someone could advise words with even higher traffic?

We hope to rank better for "personals"(now #51) and for "dating" (now #97) soon.

[Cavemptr]

Originally posted by NazaretH
Maybe someone could advise words with even higher traffic?



Subscribe to Wordtracker for a day. It will be well worth the 6 bucks or so.

Don

[Webmaster T]

Originally posted by NazaretH
Thanks a lot for this report. Looks like I will need to subscribe to use wordtracker also...Well, Overture will give you similar info and it is free!
Keywords research tool (http://www.tsworldofdesign.com/blog/tools.asp?tool=1) You can't save the keywords just copy and paste them into a text file. The Overture numbers are very close to Google numbers above.

Online Dating Services - Online Personals - Dating SinglesOnline seems to just dilute your title I wouldn't use it twice.We hope to rank better for "personals"(now #51) and for "dating" (now #97) soon. These are the Killer words and they should be the major terms the others are secondary terms which you should be able to get by getting in the top for dating and personals. I try to optimize pages for 1 major term and 3 and sometimes more secondary terms. It stands to reason get found in the top 10 for either of those and a few repeats of the secondary terms will come naturally.

[Cavemptr]

"Adult Personals" and "Personal Ads" both have big numbers too. Of course you never know how phrases are going to convert for you until you analyze your numbers.

Don

[NazaretH]

I have researched traffic numbers and think of the following:

Online Dating Services - Online Personals - Free Personal Ads

"Adult Personals" is not our product so we can't use it.

Online seems to just dilute your title I wouldn't use it twice
I think we have to. We can't drop it from "Online Personals" as we have got good positions for it, and on the same hand we want to work on "Online Dating", which shows good traffic and good KEI according to Wordtracker trial.
Do you think that the following would finally give better traffic:
Dating Services - Online Personals - Free Personal Ads

[Webmaster T]

Nazareth do you know where WordTracker gets its data? Both the Google and Overture Inventory show pretty much the same numbers. These are two major providers for search whereas Wordtracker uses Dogpile which is a small (in comparison) Meta engine.

[NazaretH]

I see. I actually used both. The only problem is that Overture makes no difference between "Personal" / "Personals" and "Dating Service" / "Dating Services".

My idea is to try to target 2-word keyphrases which give most dating traffic for now. We think it's possible as our directory brings well about 5-10 backlinks a day with whatever anchor text we require.

[basnyd]

I am very interested in the conversion going on here. I've personally used Wordtracker (trial only) to help in selecting keyword phrases. I noticed Cavemptr & Webmaster T talking about getting daily traffic numbers on Overture & Google for keyword phrases. Where do you go to obtain those numbers? Is it a subscription? Also, is it worth paying for a Wordtracker subscription? Thanks!

[Hope]

Word tracker is well worth the money. I love it. I don't think I could live without it. I have been using it for some time now and think it is amazing.

[Advisor]

Originally posted by Hope
Word tracker is well worth the money. I love it. I don't think I could live without it. I have been using it for some time now and think it is amazing. Ditto!

[Webmaster T]

Originally posted by basnyd
I noticed Cavemptr & Webmaster T talking about getting daily traffic numbers on Overture & Google for keyword phrases. Where do you go to obtain those numbers? Is it a subscription? Also, is it worth paying for a Wordtracker subscription? Thanks!WordTracker is recommended by many but I wouldn't go strictly by it's data because IMHO the traffic it states is no where near what those same keywords are actually providing. That is illustrated by the difference in the actual queries From G Adwords and Overture and WordTrackers prediction. WordTracker does other analysis for choosing keywords that is very useful.

No, no subscription for Google you can get by having an Adwords account.

Overture is also free and available on many sites. I built a Keywords Research tool (http://www.tsworldofdesign.com/blog/tools.asp?tool=1) that uses Overture. Overture numbers are monthly. The page includes a short tutorial which may or may noot be useful depending on your experience with choosing keywords. I will be adding some other monthly trending to this tool in the near future.

[Webmaster T]

Originally posted by basnyd
I noticed Cavemptr & Webmaster T talking about getting daily traffic numbers on Overture & Google for keyword phrases. Where do you go to obtain those numbers? Is it a subscription? Also, is it worth paying for a Wordtracker subscription? Thanks!WordTracker is recommended by many but I wouldn't go strictly by it's data because IMHO the traffic it states is no where near what those same keywords are actually providing. That is illustrated by the difference in the actual queries From G Adwords and Overture and WordTrackers prediction. WordTracker does other analysis for choosing keywords that is very useful.

No, no subscription for Google you can get by having an Adwords account.

Overture is also free and available on many sites. I built a Keywords Research tool (http://www.tsworldofdesign.com/blog/tools.asp?tool=1) that uses Overture. Overture numbers are monthly. The page includes a short tutorial which may or may noot be useful depending on your experience with choosing keywords. I will be adding some other monthly trending to this tool in the near future.

[Webmaster T]

sorry! hit the refresh button and it reposted!

[ihelpyou]

Hey WT, We heard you the first time. :D