GMChost.com Webmaster Guide

If you've read our previous newsletters you've heard that having your keywords in the title tag is very important. So... that would mean that repeating the keyword in the title twice, must be twice as good, and three times is three times as good? Right!? Well, not always.

Based on our research, some engines will "penalize" sites that repeat a keyword in the title tag. Does this mean that you'll be banned for putting "Come here to buy Cars, Cars, and more Cars!" in your title on those engines? You probably won't be banned but you may lose a few points toward a high ranking if you repeat the word two or more times in the title -- at least if these words are repeated right next to each other.

If you've had trouble getting good rankings and have repeated a keyword in your site title, try deleting the repeated word so it only appears once in the title. For some search engines you may find that a title that includes just one word:

<TITLE>Keyword</TITLE>

will give a better score. In any event, always keep your most important keyword or phrase near the beginning of the title. This is called improving a keyword's "prominence". For example if your keyword is "flower delivery" then:

<TITLE>Call Tulips-N-More for your FREE flower delivery</TITLE>

is a poor title because the words "flower delivery" are the last two words in the sentence - not very prominent. A better one for that phrase would be:

<TITLE>Flower delivery FREE from Tulips-N-More<TITLE>