Conflicting title tags

Now that Google has speeded up the way it re-evaluates and re-indexes websites, and that the search engine results pages (serps) are more fluid than ever, the focus and emphasis needed from the title tag has changed a little bit.

It has alway been good advice to make title tags unique for each page so that you get as much mileage out of each webpage as possible. Now, however, Google can change its mind over night as to which web pages of your web site to rank for particular phrases. You can really shoot yourself in the foot if you give out mixed messages here, since Google can pick pages you haven't optimised as being relevant for the keywords you are targetting largely on the basis on the title tag content alone, and completely ignore the ones you have optimised for these key phrases.

For instance, imagine I have a web site with two web pages optimised for the term 'great website'. The title tags contain 'my great website' and 'great website - my website is great'. But I've also been lazy and just left two un-optimised pages with the title tags 'what makes a web site great?' and 'is your website great too'. In the present climate, Google can easily change its mind and decide to index the latter two for this term and not the former two. The result? Your rankings drop considerably.

The lesson is to focus upon and optimise each web page or pair of web pages for different key phrases. This way you can increase your online foot print and avoid falling victim to this scenario. For instance, in the above example I might take the second two pages and optimise them for the term 'best web site' and then change the title tags to 'do you have the best website?' and 'what makes the best website?'. Thus, when Google re-indexes my web site it knows which two pages to rank for 'great website' and which to rank for 'best website'. No conflict, and no mind changing when the site is re-indexed. I have increased my online foot print and done some useful risk management.