Good afternoon! First of all, (in case the title didn't give it away), this is a continuation from an earlier post: Title Your Pages for Google Success ~ Part 1. These posts are about titling your "main site"- not your ActiveRain site.

Sorry that it's been a while since I've posted. For my regular readers, you probably will remember that I am currently going through chemotherapy and it's really been draining. I get it every single Friday... Today is Thursday, so I figured I would finish this post before I go in tomorrow. See how important my fellow ActiveRainers are? You lucky devils.

Just a quick wrap-up from the last post on Page Titles:

1. Lead with your strongest phrase. If you want to be number one for "Arizona Mortgage", then your page title should start with the words Arizona Mortgage, not "Welcome to my website."

2. Don't put your name in your page title. You are essentially diluting your title with words that could be keywords. Your name just isn't important enough to be on your main page title. (Sorry.)

And we continue:

When you name your pages, think about phrases. Think about phrases that people are searching for and put them in whole, in your title. Don't just jam a bunch of keywords in your title. It doesn't work.

For example, here is a decent page title:

Oakland County Real Estate >> Troy MI Real Estate

That's pretty much it. If you primarily did business in Troy, MI-- this would be a great page title. You've got two phrases that people search for and they are complete and non-fragmented.

Now, I know what some of you are thinking: "Sure, my main office is in Troy, but I also service Sterling Heights, Birmingham, Bloomfield Hills, West Bloomfield, and Auburn Hills!"

So many Realtors make this mistake when titling their pages:

* Troy Real Estate, Birmingham, Sterling Heights, Auburn Hills, Bloomfield Homes For Sale, Houses *

Huh? For those of you that aren't from Oakland County MI, you would probably pass over this title yourself-- not knowing what any of it means. Google is the same way. It's a mess!

That is a very convoluted title, yet so many of us do it. We want to grab every city we can and then jumble it on our main index page...and that only serves to make the page appear as a "jack-of-all-trades and a master of NONE."

Let's say I search for "Birmingham MI Real Estate". You would hope to attract the person that is searching for this phrase right? But where-- in our title-- is "Birmingham Real Estate"?

Nowhere. We've got the word "Birmingham", but it's all by itself. Google would rather deliver a page that is very clearly about Birmingham MI Real Estate. The title we used

* Troy Real Estate, Birmingham, Sterling Heights, Auburn Hills, Bloomfield Homes For Sale, Houses *

The title above might attract Google for the phrase "Troy Real Estate", but probably not. There is somebody else out there whose title simply concentrates on Troy. You see?

(In fact, I just did a search-- after I wrote what I wrote above-- and the first three results in Google only mention Troy Real Estate in their title-- not six cities like so many of us do.)

So how should you title your pages?

Pick a main phrase to lead off all of your page titles. Something like "Oakland County Real Estate" or maybe "Michigan Real Estate."

Then, title your main page like so:

Michigan Real Estate >> Troy MI Real Estate and Homes For Sale

(By the way, that's about the longest title you would ever want. Keep it concise.)

Now, create another page for Birmingham and title it like this:

Michigan Real Estate >> Birmingham MI Real Estate

...and so on and so on.

You do NOT have to jam everything into your main title. Keep it short and sweet. Don't believe me? Here is a great example.

Here is a search for Arizona Mortgage. You will see that I am number two right now with AZWM.com

I only mention Arizona in my title. I don't mention the other states I am licensed in.

Now here is a search for Colorado Mortgage. My site has a page-- dedicated to Colorado-- and that shows up number three in Google.

So if I can use one site (www.azwm.com) to attract Google for multiple states, you can do it for multiple cities, using my technique. Make each page in your site clearly and distinctively about one city and you will do far, far better than trying to jam 10 cities onto your main page. That's confusing to people and to Google.

Good luck!

P.S.-- The best way to learn how Google works is to conduct lots of searches. I recommend that you click on both of my searches above, so you can see my Arizona and Colorado results and how I titled those pages.