Comments on Title Tag

[dbaxa-261338]

New to this and I'm working on a title tag. I was wondering if any one had opinions/input on if this looks good/bad/ugly. I replaced the actual name of the client with "Ranch Name"

Guest Ranch Dude Ranch Wyoming Jackson Hole Activities RANCH NAME

Thanks!

[petrakraft]

The title looks a little overdone and cluttered to me. If the Ranch name has the word "Ranch" in, you have that three times in your title.
There will be certainly better solutions. Furthermore there are no separators in it - in my opinion this makes it hard to read, too.
You have the country, town, brand and activity in there - perhaps you can match e.g. to put one topic better on different pages so you clear your title.

We had a similar question over here too: http://www.seomoz.org/q/page-title-tags-seo-vs-cro- perhaps you find some answers there, too.

[RyanOD]

Often brands are seperated from the title message via one of the following characters:   |   -   >

It should be noted that the maximum number of characters that will be displayed on search results pages is capped at 70 (and in some cases resolves to less than that) so pay attention to how much info you are stuffing in those title tags. This doesn't mean you cannot go past 70 characters, but the title tag will be truncated in the search results. This can be unavoidable once in a while, but we always try to stay below 70 characters.

From a marketing / branding perspective, I'm also a big fan of title tags that 'read' properly. The example you provided doesn't really 'read' well. Of course, there is a trade off here. Are you writing your title tags for users or for search engines? Ideally, you want to walk the line between the two. For example, have you considered the following alternatives?

Alternative 1

Use the | to seperate the title tag into two short statements followed by your branding.

Wyoming Guest Ranch & Dude Ranch | Jackson Hole Activities | RANCH NAME

Alternative 2

Rather than attempt to target 'Guest Ranch, Dude Ranch, and Jackson Hole Activities' all on the same page, why not create a second page as follows?

Guest Ranch & Dude Ranch in Wyoming | RANCH NAME (or Wyoming Guest Ranch & Dude Ranch | RANCH NAME)

Jackson Hole Activities | RANCH NAME

One final note, be sure you are targeting the correct keywords here. For example, do you have data that shows which of the following is the best choice (there are probably even more options, but this gets the point across)?

Wyoming Guest Ranch

Wyoming Dude Ranch

Guest Ranch in Wyoming

Dude Ranch in Wyoming

Jackson Hole Dude Ranch

Jackson Hole Guest Ranch

Guest Ranch in Jackson Hole

Dude Ranch in Jackson Hole

There may or may not be a lot of data available for these searches, but I would at least take a moment to check Google Trends and Google Keyword Tool. Furthermore, as you have a Pro account, you can use SEOmoz's Keyword Difficulty Tool.