Onpage SEO: Title Tags Change Search Engine Rankings

Recently I decided to blog more about SEO related topics. Mainly because I have a couple keywords I want to start targeting. I noticed one of my blogs (My San Diego SEO Blog) (<— not this SEO Blog) was getting traffic for terms relating to ‘SEO‘ and ‘San Diego‘. I’m pretty sure the love I’m getting from the engines come from my relevant link right here in my blog side bar because I never really had any San Diego content.

The title of the blog used to be

SEO Competition – Blog 2.0 vs. The Website

But now that I’m targeting the term San Diego SEO, I changed it to

San Diego SEO, Blog SEO & Web 2.0 SEO

Basically I gave the term I’m targeting prominence, plus I gave the keyword ‘SEO‘ more density. This blog is one of my fun blogs. I’m not really targeting any other terms. Normally, I wouldn’t recommend adding a keyword 3 times to the title tag (like I did with ‘SEO’). But like I said, it’s my fun blog.

I was getting traffic from Yahoo! & MSN, but NOT GOOGLE. As you can see in this snapshot I took (with the time & date) that my rankings for the term ’san diego seo’ was horrible.

San Diego SEO SERP

Before I made that title tag change on Thursday, August 7th 2008 Blog Optimizer was ranked #498 for the term ‘san diego seo

*Disclaimer – That Thursday night I wrote the post; Web 2.0 Tags + SEO = Search Engine Love

Now look at the change in ranking the next day.

San Diego SEO Results

The next day (Friday, August 8th 2008) BlogOptimizer was ranked #63 for the term ‘san diego seo

*Disclaimer #2 – Since that site is a blog, it has the ability to jump 400 spots AND fall 400 spots overnight (literally). If you search for San Diego SEO now, I’m willing to bet that BlogOptimizer is not #63 anymore. Blogs are very fluid in the SERP’s unless that blog has strong link strength.

In case you didn’t know how important titles were to websites, search a term in Google and see that 9 out of the top 10 sites have that targeted term in their the listing titles.

I would like to thank you for taking the time to read my SEO blog. I really do appreciate it. You can read another related post (found below) or subscribe here. Once again, thank you for visiting James’ SEO blog.

Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Other SEO Related Blog Posts:

  1. Title Tags, SEO and Samples
  2. Onpage or Offpage – Which is More Effective for SEO?
  3. 13 Search Operators for Ultimate Link Building
  4. My Blog Search List (For Commenting)

This website uses IntenseDebate comments, but they are not currently loaded because either your browser doesn't support JavaScript, or they didn't load fast enough.

5 comments

  1. Yeah, you should make your home page a static page. Blogs are good for supplement. But not for strong and sturdy rankings.

  2. Great post i really like your blog provide information as well as yours profile…
    Visit At : Ecommerce Developer ! Graphic Design Company

  3. Hello webmaster bees searching for Seo Rankings and found your blog reg Onpage SEO: Title Tags Change Search Engine Rankings | James Harrison’s SEO Blog ..i have gone through your site

  4. Great site I found it very informative. If you are interested in a way to get MILLIONS OF FREE VISITORS to your site completely FREE!! Check Out this site…http://www.onlinemoneyinfonow.com/viralmarketing.php

  5. Hi, nice post thanks for sharing all.

Leave a comment