What's the latest on Title Tags?

[netviper]

What is the latest on what Google is looking for?

Keyword one, Keyword two?

Sentences with the Keyword in them?

[chris.kent]

Based on what I've seen on Google's guidelines & other research, I think the best strategy is to write them like you would write headline for an Ad. Obviously you get more characters than AdWords, but the principle is the same. Your goal is always to get someone to click. So a headline like "SEO Tools, SEO toolset, Internet Marketing tools" might get a few clicks just by virtue of it's ranking but a title tag like "SEO Tools that make your job easier" would probably receive a higher CTR which is a ranking factor in Google.

[SEO5Team]

Hi Dave,

Just to be on the safe side, i'd advise optimizing each title tag for one keyword. Seen a lot of sites get hit with the overoptimizaiton penalty. You may think that having the keyword twice in the title tag might not do much harm, however when you start couting the # of instances the keyword is used on the page ( in the content, anchor text, image tags etc), it all adds up.

[netviper]

CTR is a ranking factor in Adwords, but I haven't heard of it being a factor in SEO.  I do see they somewhat track that in webmaster tools.