I'm About To Find Out The Importance Of Page Title Options

[Pete]

I am selling software audio instruments & samples. Following some SEO I'm very proud of, I got a page with keywords Logic EXS24 Instruments and/or Logic EXS24 Samples to no. 1 in Google.

However the Apple software Logic is a fairly specialised market, and I subsequently developed the instruments for the much more common (and obviously more competitive) Garageband software.

This had the added disadvantage of not using the "EXS24" interface so my only keywords are Garageband Instruments and/or Garageband samples.

I made another page optimised for those words and after a few weeks checked its position. Nowhere near as good as the page for Logic - it was on page 3 of Google.

I was rather sad about this until I had another look at the page listing title in Google - I'd misspelt it as Gargaband (It's still cached like that).

I'm very embarrassed, but I learnt a lesson. It's now corrected and I'm waiting with bated breath to see how the correct spelling affects the ranking.

Watch this space to see if there is a happy ending!

This post has been edited by Pete: Aug 16 2008, 07:57 AM

[dazzlindonna]

It may actually drop, since I assume Gargaband is less competitive. But I've got my fingers crossed for you. Good luck!

Oh wait, brain kicked in. You weren't on page 3 for gargaband. (I wonder where you ranked for that...page 1 most likely). So, yes, if you ranked on page 3 for garageband kwd, using gargaband in title, then the change might help nicely. Again, good luck!

This post has been edited by dazzlindonna: Aug 16 2008, 08:06 AM

[Pete]

Oh wait, brain kicked in. You weren't on page 3 for gargaband. (I wonder where you ranked for that...page 1 most likely).

Yes, it's #1 on page 1, but unbelievably there are 3 pages of gargaband misspelings! Thanks for the crossed fingers.

This post has been edited by Pete: Aug 16 2008, 08:23 AM

[DrPete]

Unfortunately, clearing an old title out of Google can take a little time, especially if it's not heavily accessed or linked to. If the page has few or no external links, you can definitely speed the process along by establishing a couple of new links, adding a couple of new internal links, and making sure it's in your (XML) site-map.

BTW, just as an aside, I'd argue with you about "Garageband Instruments" being your only option. I don't know the marketplace, but if this proves too competitive, you could aim for longer-tail options, such as "Buy Garageband Instruments", "Garageband Instruments Store", "Garageband 2 Instruments", etc.

[yannis]

BTW, just as an aside, I'd argue with you about "Garageband Instruments" being your only option.

I would second Dr Pete on this one and from my own experience with the long tail and Google. The SE seem to love titles like 'How to install Garageband Instruments', 'Help with your Garageband Instruments', certain words seem to trigger some semantic algos and get some extra score points. Mostly the 'how', 'why', 'where', 'who, 'when' ..etc. After all a lot of queries need these words and it makes long-tail targeting easier.

Hope it helps.

Yannis

[Pete]

Well, finally got the correct spelling up there and a slight improvement, top of page 2 for my main phrase "Garageband Instruments", but I did add some external links so I don't know how much difference the spelling has made.

Thanks Dr Pete and Yannis for suggestions about other keywords, "Buy garageband instruments" gets 2nd on page 1.

Problem is competing with sites giving the things away though.

This one ranks very high with not very good SEO - must have a lot of back links as they are very good samples for free - I can't compete with that!