Is all duplication of HTML title content bad?

[SoundinTheory]

In light of Hummingbird and that HTML titles are the main selling point in SERPs, is my approach to keyword rich HTML titles bad? Where possible I try to include the top key phrase to descripe a page and then a second top keyphrase describing what the company/ site as a whole is or does. For instance an estate agents site could consist of HTML title such as this

Buy Commercial Property in Birmingham| Commercial Estate Agents

Birmingham Commercial Property Tips | Commercial Estate Agents

In order to preserve valuable characters I have also been omitting brand names other than on the home page... is this also poor form?

[KevinBudzynski]

No--best practice is to describe the page as best as possible and this typically consist of using keywords. If you try to stick many kw's in the title tage, it will look spammy and should be avoided (the two examples you gave, IMHO, are perfect).

Is using your company name in the title is acceptable? Yes it is--however it should be secondary and creating a good compelling title (that closely matches searcher's query and page content) should be top priority.

[crackingmedia]

Hi, I don't think it is true to say that as a result of Hummingbird that Title tags are are the main selling point in SERPs, but certainly having lots of keywords in your Title will not be helpful to you.

The longer the Title tag, the less SEO value each word has, but that doesn't mean you should always aim for a very short Title tag either. The most important words need to be near the start of the Title and most of all - and this it true pre-Hummingbird as well - the Title should be a good summary of what the page is about.

Think about the Title tag as the title of a page or chapter in a book. It needs to be succinct but descriptive enough to be understood (by both a person and the search engine) and it needs to be unique.

The Title examples you have given look reasonable and well targeted I would say.

I hope that helps,
Peter

[crackingmedia]

Just as Kevin said! [thumbs up]

Peter

[CHarkins]

I would say a lot of this depends on the goals for each page.

Think of your page title and meta description as an adwords ad for that particular page. If you were to put up an ad to get people to come to that page, what would the headline and ad copy be?

Would that headline and ad copy properly sell the click? Does the page deliver on the promise sold in the ad? (In other words, will they see one headline and come to a page whose copy is totally different, or does the headline and copy lead right into the page?)

Depending on how strong your brand is, you may want to include the brand name within the body copy. People like what they know and if you've already invested in brand equity, then get that to pay off for you in terms of more clicks.

Titles and Metas are more of an art form as you're balancing how well the title helps direct ranking (focused keywords) with how well the title sells the click (persuasive headlines and branding copy).

As with most things - you'll want to do some testing and see which works best both for your site and your search queries.

[SoundinTheory]

Thank you for your response I understand and always try to follow your points so I suppose my questions is actually: Is the duplicate content of the title describing the company/ site detrimental i.e pages from the same site competing for the same search? So if all pages contain the phrase "commercial estate agents" because that is what they are, would it be seen as spammy and would the pages compete against each other?

For one of the core service searches I have three consecutive results for different pages including the homepage. Is this a good or a bad thing?

My point about humming bird is whether further explanation of the page would be more beneficial than explaining the website? For example is

Birmingham Commercial Property Tips | Commercial Estate Agents

Better than

Birmingham Commercial Property Tips | Help find the perfect premises (ignoring length)

This latter solution has better contextual information making each HTML title completely unique but does this weaken the site's ranking for Commercial Estate Agents?

[crackingmedia]

I would say that for the latter part of the Title it is better to have the actual name of the company than "Commercial Estate Agents" on every page. Apart from that is on the home page where the format could be "Name of company | Commercial Estate Agents".

That way you are reinforcing the company name/brand which is reasonable whereas I think repeating "Commercial Estate Agents" is a little spammy and IMHO you don't need to keep using it as the clear message of the site and the pages it has should give the understanding that the site if for a commercial estate agent.

On your other question, I would say:

Birmingham Commercial Property Tips | Company Name

is better than

Birmingham Commercial Property Tips | Help find the perfect premise

The latter says what the page is about, presumably "commercial property tips", but the second part is just extra words that I assume are saying the same thing, apart from the first part is more focussed on Birmingham.

That's not to say you couldn't use the latter in the page Description tag which could read something like "Company Name will help you find the perfect commercial premises in Birmingham". At the start of the the page itself I would also say something similar.

Peter