Page title for SEO – is it important?

If you are trying to optimise a client’s website, you may find the brand team have different views on SEO.

Brand team are obsessed about how their brand is displayed which is their job. However, it can sometimes prevent their site from being completely optimised.

Page title is one example – they want to have the brand at the front of the title tag and keywords at the end, if at all. SEO gurus often have to compromise and agree with brand. But what is the best solution?

Below I have summarised three articles and their opinion on page title.

SEO PPC PROS recommends:

Place the keywords first in the title tag. This is the first place most people look and this is the first place the search engines look when reading your site, therefore you want this to be the first place you want your keywords.
This article also highlights the problem that I have faced from brand that want the title tag to look like

“Company name – keywords”

I like what the article said about the branding department. “There are a lot of people who think branding is so important for everything in marketing because that’s what they learned in college and from there marketing managers in the 90s.” This is so true. The article suggests to remove your brand from the first characters of your page title if at all possible and find a way to put your most valuable keywords there instead.

Randfish offers some more advice about title tags – I have just picked a feW

1. Brand your traffic
Rand suggests using the title of your site or brand at the beginning or end of every title tag.
2. Limit length to 65 characters (including spaces) or less
3. Incorporate keyword phrases
4. Target longer phrases if they’re relevant
For example a title tag like “SkiDudes | Downhill Skiing Equipment & Accessories” is better than “SkiDudes | Skiing Equipment” if there is content about Downhill skiing equipment and accessories on the page.
5. Use a divider
Rand recommends using the “|” symbol (aka the pipe bar). Other are the arrow “>” or hyphen “-” and both work well. ”
6. Be consistent
When you have a good formula for your page titles that works, then stick to it.
7. Repeat in the headline
Re-use the title tag of each page as the H1 header tag can be valuable from both a keyword targeting standpoint and a user experience improvement.

Asssit 2 web

This article states that the keywords should be in the first few words of the title tag. It should be used no more than twice. The title should have capitals on each work except for the minor words such as a, and, an, the and should be 65 characters with no special characters.

If you know of any other good points to raise, please let me know.

SEO events calendar

It is 2010 and the start of another year for SEO.

Below I have included a list of SEO, SEM and social media events that are happening through out the year. If I have missed any out, please comment.

February 16 – February 18th
SES London

SES London is organized and programmed by the SES Advisory Board and SearchEngineWatch.com, the leading authority on Search Engine Marketing (SEM), including SEO and PPC. This event has happened every year for the past 11 years. For three days there are sessions covering topics such as PPC management, keyword research, SEO, social media, local, mobile, link building, duplicate content, multiple site issues, video optimization, site optimization, . There is also an exhibit floor with companies that can help you grow your business, there are networking events and parties as well.

Location on SES London

February 15th – February 18th
Mobile World Congress

As I mentioned in my previous post about mobile events , this takes place in Barcelona and is the event of the year to attend if you are serious about mobile.

March 15th and March 16th
Social Media Forum

Two day event featuring four dedicated conference streams, workshops and exhibition.
Conference streams include: Social Media World Forum, Enterprise Social Media, Social TV , Mobile Social Media Cloud Computing Congress.

Key speakers from global brands, organisations, social networking publishers and developers, pioneering social media leaders, agencies, content producers plus many more.

Social media gaming & virtual currencies. Building social media apps – and understanding the market for virtual good and virtual currencies. The opportunities for brands within social gaming.
The impact of social media on politics, the impact Twitter is having in politics and celebrity domains, and the role of social media within PR

There is a lot going on and I hope to attend.

Social Media Conference

June 15th and June 16th
Mobile Marketing Forum NYC

This event is also being held in Singapore April 14th and 15th. The MMA Forum New York is an event for the mobile community and there will be attendees from agencies, brands, carriers and other members of the global mobile marketing ecosystem.

There will be keynote speakers, presentations which will cover the latest developments in mobile. Mobile is an effective marketing channel and there will be case studies of successful implementation of mobile strategies.

The event is quite expensive and can cost up to $1600, but if you book early, you can get a discount. Free passes available for brands/ non-mobile agencies. Contact forum@mmaglobal.com

Agencies offering a mobile strategy

There are many agencies that are already offering comprehensive mobile strategy.

I have highlighted a few below.

Accuracast offer the following services:

# Mobile search engine optimisation
# Accessibility testing
# Usability testing
# Multilingual mobile site optimisation

Zealousweb is another agency that offer mobile seo services.

* Website analysis
* Mobile website design
* Mobile website development
* Mobile search engine optimisation
* Accessibility
* Keyword research
* Multilingual mobile site optimisation

Mobile search will be growing over the next year so there will be more agencies offering mobile search in 2010.

Why should you have a mobile strategy

Three main reasons:

1. Everyone is going mobile

The iPhone launched UK November 2007 changed the way we thought about mobile phones and advertising forever.

Google even has its own mobile strategy, launching the first Android phone the G1 in 2008. Last November Google paid $750 million for Admob so it certainly sees mobile as a growing area, Apple does as well and bought Quattro, Admob’s privately owned rival which owns mobile websites and applications for Apple’s iPhone and other smart phones.

2. There is potential to earn a new revenue stream from mobile.

According to Gartner, mobile advertising revenues could be worth as much $13 billion by 2013. If we just had 1% of that, we would be very happy agency. There is a window of opportunity here for a digital agency that says it can offer everything digital to deliver a new service to its clients and generate more revenue.

3. There is an increase in the number of smartphones

According to Strategy Analytics, smartphones now account for 15% of global mobile shipments, and that proportion is expected to rise to 45% by 2013. Smartphones are a great platform to create adverts or mobile apps to drive customers to the clients’ products.

If you are an agency and have clients that expand across a wide range of industries, there is huge potential. As a digital agency you should put together a roadmap of how you can drive more sales to their website through this new channel – mobile.

There are many areas of a mobile marketing strategy as the table below indicates.

Mobile Marketing Communications

(source: www.marshall.usc.edu – Mobile Marketing: From Marketing Strategy to Mobile Marketing Campaign Implementation)

As an agency, you have to decide which area you can offer that best suits your clients’ needs.

Vodafone launches the iPhone

Today, January 14th was the day the third UK mobile operator, Vodafone launched the iPhone.

I went to London Bloggers last night and Dan Bowsher from Vodafone was there to promote the iPhone. One lucky winner won one of the first Vodafone iPhones. Congratulations.

According to Dan Bowsher, there have been more than 50,000 iPhones sent to customers today.

There are a range of deals available at the Vodafone store.

iPhone on Vodafone

Images from the Vodafone store.

Google’s mobile strategy – Nexus one

Google has launched its new smartphone, the Nexus One. It will sell the phone directly to consumers, aiming to boost its position in the emerging mobile Internet market by exerting greater control over the new generation of Web-surfing devices. It hasn’t even hit the UK shelves yet and is already being slated saying it is not as revolutionary in design as the iPhone was. Well that is a hard act to follow. The Tech sites have said it is not that different from other Android phones. HTC, the company making the handset have said the new phones are built on the same Android 2.1 software that runs Droid smartphones but it has updated features such as 3D graphics and speech recognition.

The Nexus One is sent from Google’s online store for $179 with a two-year contract from Deutsche Telekom’s T-Mobile USA, or $529 if you do not want to be tied in to contract.

Unfortunately, all phones are shipped from the US so if you order one from the UK, you will have to pay the base price of $529. Plus an extra $30 for DHL shipping and $20 for UK adapter (if you want one). And don’t forget the VAT – now back up to 17.5% making this one expensive phone. I would wait if you can’t afford to buy one during this credit crunch.

But good news people, Vodafone are apparently getting the Nexus One in March. So watch this space….

Mobile strategy

You can longer ignore mobile as part of your marketing plan.

People didn’t think digital or online marketing would take off but look at where we are today.

Companies should start thinking about having a mobile strategy as part of their marketing plan. Of course, this may not be suitable for all, but it certainly is for retail, banks and even some B2B businesses.

1.Disney & mobile

Disney recently announced its mobile strategy . They are going to have SMS alearts and games, sweepstakes programmes and video enabled mobile website – they will have a WAP version and one for iPhone’s safari browser. Last October, they released a free, ad-supported app for iPhone and iPod touch. Their mobile site and app support all the Disney films, tv shows and video games.

They also have an expanding line-up of paid applications available in the App Store such as Toy Story Mania, Disney Fairies Fly, The Nightmare Before Christmas and Breakspin. The entertainment giant works with several mobile ad networks, including Millennial Media, AdMob, Jumptap and Nokia.

2. Search engines go mobile

Google even has its own mobile strategy, launching the first Android phone the G1 in 2008. Last November Google paid $750 million for Admob and Apple bought Quattro, Admob’s privately owned rival which owns mobile websites and applications for Apple’s iPhone and other smart phones, such as those using Google’s Android operating system.

There is potential to earn a new revenue stream. Mobile advertising has not yet completely kicked off, mainly due to the old phones that were slow and didn’t allow more than text messages. According to Strategy Analytics, smartphones now account for 15% of global mobile shipments, and that proportion is expected to rise to 45% by 2013. There is a window of opportunity here for companies to get on board early and work out their own mobile strategy or work with an agency that can help them. According to Gartner, mobile advertising revenues could be worth as much $13 billion by 2013. If a company could have just 1% of that, they would be very happy indeed.

Source: Business standard

When you do decide to go mobile, make sure your mobile strategy is part of your marketing plan and not just ad hoc as this will not work. Please do not think of your mobile strategy as building applications and then sitting still. Zara has jumped on the iPhone app bandwagon but don’t seem to have thought much about the actual application as this post from Econsultancy explains.

2010 is the year for mobile search

Since the iPhone was launched in June 2007, more and more people are accessing the web through their mobile. There are of course other smart phones on the market place, but the iPhone was the one that made it easy to surf the web and the first handset to introduce apps.

Since 2007, there has been two more releases of the iPhone – iPhone 3G and iPhone 3GS as well as the Android G1, HTC Magic and the Motorola DEXT, plus not forgetting the Palm Pre.

So this year is set to be the year where more people are accessing the web through their handset.

According to Morgan Stanley , more customers will access the internet through their mobiles than PCs within 5 years. It also states that the Mobile Internet market will be “at least 2x size of Desktop Internet,”. Morgan Stanley bases this on analysis comparing Internet users with mobile subscribers.

The growth of the mobile internet is due to the adoption 3G and increasing popularity of smartphones, the leader being the iPhone. Morgan Stanley predict smartphones “will out-ship the global notebook + netbook market in 2010E and out-ship the global PC market (notebook + netbook + desktop) by 2012″

So for those who have never thought about mobile search, now is the time. Check out my other blog post about mobile search.

Happy New Year 2010

Happy New Year – Goodbye the Naughties – Hello the one-ders

Google wishes you a Happy New Year

Bing wishes everyone a Happy New Year

Happy New Year from Yahoo!