Is changing your meta titles frequently good SEO Practice

[Sexandmetal]

Greetings,

Im a new SEO and really knew nothing until signing up to SEOMoz. After reading the SEO101 and gathering as much information in a short period of time things started  to become a little clearer.

So I started my first campaign used my new SEO knowledge and input all of my meta information. Then I waited a few days to see what happened with my search result.

We had never ranked for a single keyword before mind you. So a couple/few of days go by and I started punching in my keywords and looking through the pages. There I was page three. I was SO happy.

I read the entire SEO101 again, realized a little more about what I had to do. So I started changing everything up, adding pictures, I found out what a IMG ALT Attributes were in the HTML editor, bolded text and all the other things I missed the first time around.

Three days go by and I move up again. I start to notice my traffic is increasing and I am actually getting organic hits through search traffic. This has never happened before. I am over the moon. But I realize that I have my main focus keyword as the second key word in my title tag. So I switch the two words around, wait a few more days.

Here's why I ask my question. The original title tag was still showing up and I was on the first page for both keywords, and I could see both title tags when searching for either keyword.

So; Is changing your meta titles frequently good SEO Practice ?

Warmest regards,

Michael

S&M

Warning: adult site, NSFW

[MoosaHemani]

Frequently changing title tag as a good practice… I don’t think so! I mean it’s good to change when you think the changed title can better tell search engine and users about the website but changing it frequently to get SEO boom… I don’t think it works!

[Aran_Smithson]

First of all, welcome aboard. I always love to here of peoples first steps into SEO and the results they get.

My site has around 450 pages, thus its would be a major job for me to amend my page titles. Sites like SEOmoz have thousands of pages, and the vast majority of them are available in SERPs. Now as far as I know SEOmoz do not change their titles, again because it would be a massive job.

Saying that, if I run an offer or a sale on my website I will generally change my homepage title to reflect the fact I have a sale on, in the hope that the Sale text will be updated promptly in the SERPs and attarct a few extra click throughs.

In summary, no I dont think the freshness of your page titles has any positive effect on your SEO. But, It may impact your Click through rate (which I guess in turn could effect your SEO...now were going full circle).

Clear as mud?

[Anthony_NorthSEO]

I agree with both Moosa and Aran. I don't think constantly changing your page titles on a site-wide basis is going to help your rankings. It may actually have the opposite effect, depending on how you interpret Google's mysterious and upcoming "Over-Optimization" penalty.

However if you're page title's need improving and doing so will help you increase impressions, I wouldn't avoid it. I just wouldn't make a habit of tweaking them and changing them too often.

Like Aran said, if you've running a special promotion, have a major announcement, incredible new content, etc... I absolutely think changing the titles on relevant pages to reflect those things is a great idea for increasing CTR and conversions.

Moderation is the key on this I believe.

Hope this helps.

Anthony

[CPU]

Testing different titles to see if you can improve your rankings for specific keywords or to focus on different keywords may be worthwhile but changing them for the sake of making a change is pointless.