Jeff Woelker : Chicago SEO, SEM, and Social Media Consultant

Being an SEO professional, I have seen it all in the name of search optimization: keyword stuffing, link farms, hidden text, showing different text for a search engine as opposed to an actual user, and lastly, the title tag overload.

What is the title tag overload you ask? It’s the theory that if I mention a word and or phrase enough times in my title meta tag, I can somehow convince Google or others that I am the authority on this topic. Now, I am in favor of putting synonyms or related phrases in your title tag to catch parallel searchers. For example if your website is about solar power, and your title tag looks like “Chicago Solar Partnership” and you make it “Chicago Solar Partnership | Serving Chicago’s Solar Energy Needs”. That works well and is both relevant and well thought out, as you mention Chicago twice and Solar twice and it’s still useful to the user as it provides more information in the search results prior to them clicking on it.

The problem arises when you have sites that get a little carried away with the title tag stuffing. Here is a perfect example, just search for “Chicago web design“:

The real offenders here are #1 and #2. I have seen a number of #1’s sites and they tend to do this across the board for any websites they “optimize”. First, the capital letters are off putting and make me want to skip over it completely. Second, I would rather click on a link that mentions it once, but also provides information regarding what the company does, offers, sells, etc. that applies to me. And finally, for me as an SEO expert, I know what they are trying to do and will probably skip over it as a result.

The real key to any successful SEO campaign is two fold: unique, relevant content not found anywhere else on the net and an easy way for people to link to that content. Everything beyond that is easy peasy.

Any other thoughts?

Image courtesy of University of Michigan Blog