Will changing the title tags cause me to lose rankings?

[webestate]

That was a great post by Rand.  Thanks for sharing.

Because my company name has 3 words it takes up a lot of characters.  That is why I'm having a hard time squeezing it in and may just leave out.  Besides when someone searches for my services they don't look up my company name they typically look up a keyword.

Also, what has been your experience about rankings and changing title tags?  Should I expect them to go down for a few weeks?

[webestate]

Do you have your company name in the title also?  Ive been reading it's important however in my industry people don't typically search by brand name......they search for exactly what they are looking for.

Did your rankings go down a little first?  I have been told that I may experience decreased rankings for a few weeks.

[webestate]

Thank you for the response.  The challenge I have in adding my company name is that its 3 words and takes up space.......leaving less space for #1 and #2 keywords.

How do you suggest I handle that?  I guess if Austin was the first keyword I could just have Tenant Advisors in the very end.

For example -

My current title tag:  Austin Office Space For Lease | Austin Commercial Real Estate Properties | Retail Space For Rent | Austin Tenant Advisors

I could use this instead?  Austin Office Space & Commercial Real Estate Tenant Advisors

If I do that then I'm leaving out Lease, Properties, Rent, Retail

[Francisco_Meza]

I really don't worry about it that much. I recommend to just do what is best for your customer and focus on conversions.

I literally copied and pasted from the SERP one of my pages. This is for the KW phrase "Ship car to Germany".

Shipping Car to Germany from USA - Save money shipping autos to ...

<cite>www.shipoverseas.com/us/ship-car/.../shipping-car-to-germany.html</cite>Shipping car to Germany from USA. Departure & Arrival Ports, Documents, Duty Tax. We ship cars for private individuals, active US military,and tourists.Notice that the keyword "Ship" is not in the title, but the related KW "Shipping" is. If I change the title tag to "Ship Car to Germany", then my rankings may be affected a little, but that's going to depend on where the competitors rank in Google's algorithm too. Now that I look at this, I have to change my title tag and description because I have better content on my page.

[Francisco_Meza]

Then start building quality links with anchor text include "Lease, Properties, Rent, Retail" in them.

[DougRoberts]

Are all these things equivalent? If someone was searching for office space, would they be interested in retail space?

Would there be any advantage using two separate pages targeting these two audiences each addressing the specific needs, and concerns specific to that type of customer?

Pages tend to be less engaging/appealing when there's a broad scope and generic content.

[webestate]

Thanks Doug.  I totally agree with that however doing title tags for the home page is tough because that is the catch all right?  From the home page I have links to more specific landing pages (e.g office space, retail space, etc...)

What is best practice for the home page title tags?

[Francisco_Meza]

You're over analyzing this. If your home page is the only page that ranks, you have problems. My website has 28% of incoming visits to the home page. 71% is to the landing pages.

BUILD highly relevant landing pages and write KICK ASS content for those landing pages.

This to me looks spammy:  Austin Office Space For Lease | Austin Commercial Real Estate Properties | Retail Space For Rent | Austin Tenant Advisors

Obviously you are trying to keyword stuff.

I would write something clickable like this: Office Space for Rent in Austin for Commercial & Retail. Get Rates.

[DougRoberts]

Completely agree with Francisco. The problem with home pages is that people try and make them mean something to everyone - and they end up not meaning very much at all.

Home pages are usually your brand landing page - it's the best place for people trying to find out about your company.

For someone searching for a keyword specific to one of your offers - a specific landing page is definitely the way to go. You can make the pages extremely relevant to the search term, the user intent and your specific offering. Think of the benefits to the user when they're landing on the very best page to answer their query.

[webestate]

Thanks for that Francisco.  Luckily my landing pages rank as well as my home page and each has good content..  Just been trying to figure out the best Title for the home page.  I like what you suggested.

[webestate]

Thanks guys for all your feedback and suggestions.  I think I have decided on this one for the home page.

Austin TX Office Space & Commercial Real Estate. Find Rental Listings

Thoughts?

[Francisco_Meza]

I think this looks WAY better than your other one. I'll give you a thumbs up because you're learning.

[webestate]

HI Doug,

Thank you for your input a while back!  Wanted to see if you could give me some insite on best practice for this........

On this site http://www.austintenantadvisors.com/ I have my main landing pages listed in the navigation under "Types".  The reason why I did this is because I am not sure where to put those on the home page where it does not look spammy to Google and looks natural for users.  Obviously they need to appear someone on the home page for Google to be able to crawl and index them.

Your thoughts?