Title writing "101"

Title writing 101

I’m a complete newb. After lurking around here for few days I decided to re-do my home page title.

Let’s say there is on Online Flower Shop, selling 6 kinds of flowers.
Every kind of flower comes in two ways - designer arranged, or in bulk, as a stock item.
Two kinds of flowers - Roses and Lilies outsells the rest of the flowers by 80%.
Roses outsells Lilies by 80%. Red Roses outsells Roses by 60%.
Let’s say that store owner “suspects” that majority of searches comes for “Red Roses“, designer arranged.

Now I need to create a title, for the home page of interactive ecommerce online flower shop, that sells few hundred different bouquets of flowers [different product] in 6 major categories.

<TITLE>Flowers and Roses - Lilies, Red Rose, Designer Tulips and Bulk Flower Bouquets</TITLE>

My Logic - We got “Flowers” - good. We got “Flower” as a singular at the end - good again. We have “Roses“, then another keyword, and then specify that we want “Red Rose” again - and is a singular to spread the cloud. And for the sake of characters left, we include 2 more products (“lilies“, “tulips“) and 2 major sub-category descriptions - “Bulk” and “Designer“. I also note and kind of happy about having “Designer” keyword ahead of the “Bulk” closer to the beginning of the title.

Question 1 -
Does Google want me to incorporate words like “shop”, “buy”, “online”, “store” to the title of the home page of Online Flower Shop there people Buy flowers in the Store? Will I get any ranking credit for honestly listing the e-commerce nature of my site with such obvious terms OR all that I’ll get is Google’s known “hate” of ecommerce Vs. Educational non commerce sites?

Question 2 -
Title above looks like a low quality keyword staffed query, done along best-known 101 techniques. What can be done “advanced” to really Rock-n-Roll on the serp? And yes I know title along does not matter - but it is title writing 101 so let’s get the best out of title and worry about the rest of the “game” later.

Thank you all!

Google doesn't want you to include anything - the searcher that's doing the querying and their terms are the only important parts.

Try and visualize a title arrangement like this:

[Keyword Phrases] | [Enticements] | [Your Business Name]

Rational

1. Keyword Phrases - Left offers most weight and as you move right to 64 characters it drops way off. Suggest about 30 characters for keyword phrases

2. Enticements - once you get past a few words the law of diminishing returns makes it near impossible to help with ranks AND you are ranking for a reason... "TO GET CLICKS"... as such reserving 10 - 20 Characters for FREE SHIPPING, ON SALE, WHILE QUANTITIES LAST, 50% OFF, FREE XXX WITH PURCHASE and PROUDCT PRICE $149.95 - is a better use of the noman's titleland.

3. Your Business Name - RECALL VALUE - remember that people don't always buy immediately and because they are not intimately familiar with you, your company name isn't always remembered unless they see it again... competing against that is the fact the SERPs rarely stay exactly the same and if your listing (that they may be interested in) moved "generic keyword info" isn't enough to provide "recall value"... this is particularly useful if your business and domain names are not identical.

So a title like:

Flowers - Designer, Bulk, Bouquets | SHIPPED FREE @ Petal Drops

[63 characters]

Hi again Knopa,

Incorporating words like shop, buy etc. would help in regards to search terms using those words in particular. As for Google hating the ecommerce I would not go that far, there is an option in Analytics to let them know what side of the coin your site is on.

As for the second part of your question it would depend more on the keywords you are targeting. When writing titles or meta descriptions I make a list of all my keywords then cross out any duplicate words. From that I write something promotional in nature ensuring all words have been covered.

Hi,
Knopa

First of all, you have to decide about search engine. Where will you get rank among the following.

1. Google

2. Yahoo

3. Live

Because, there are different method to give importance of title tag.

1. Google shows 60 to 65 characters in title.

2. Yahoo shows 80 to 85 characters in title.

3. Live shows 90 to 100 characters in title.

Try to make informative title so, you can improve your click through rate.

Thanks
<snip>

just focus on the concept of making a title for the page that is eye catching and also will not look a lot like spam.

Thank you all. Special thanks to fathom, I appreciate the wisdom and time spent

So a title like:

Flowers - Designer, Bulk, Bouquets | SHIPPED FREE @ Petal Drops

[63 characters]

======================

fathom, you did not include "roses" even once in the title. Yes, roses has it's own well ranking page about "red roses" - but I thought it is a must to list "roses" on the home page too? Also, the first word in your version of title is "flowers" - is it wise to go after such a huge broad term as the first keyword of the homepage?

Does it raise questions to semantic understanding of keywords?

The jest was my post - not whether the keyword phrases are valid or if there are better ones.

THOUGH... try to remember you have a complete website and the mainpage and mainpage title should be a reflection of the broad commodities being offered....

Roses are "flowers" so a title with only flowers in it support roses and it is likely you have a rose only page and that is the best place to have roses mentioned.

At your homepage Flowers and keywords that support flowers is better than having flower types [unless you only sell roses or tulips.

Illustration ONLY