On-Page Report Says 'F', and I'm Confoozled As to Why

[CodeWeavers]

I'm primarily interested in how we failed in our "Broad Keyword Usage in Title" category.

The Keyword Pair we're gunnin' for is:

"Mac Windows"

Our current page title is:

"CrossOver: Windows on Mac and Linux with the easiest and most affordable emulator - CodeWeavers"

This is, I grant, ugly. However, bear with me.

SEOMoz Report Card says "Easy Fix!" and suggests:

"Employ the keyword in the page title, preferrably as the first words in the element."

I humbly submit that "Mac" and "Windows" IS in the page title. So what am I missing? Is it the placement of the words relative to each other, or relative to the start of the sentence? Or is the phrase "CrossOver:" somehow blocking the rest of the sentence from being read? Are colons evil? I'm genuinely mystified as to why (from a structural standpoint) our existing title tag is failing this test, and I'd be delighted for answers and/or feedback. Thanks in advance.

[JustinTaylor88]

I am fairly sure that if you have the keyword set up in your campaign as "Mac Windows" that the SEOMoz web app looks for an exact match on those two words.

You currently have "...Windows on Mac...", if you change your title to contain the exact phrase "..Mac Windows.." that should fix that error with the report card.

In my experience Google doesn't necessarily require the keywords to be an exact match for SERPs, although in a lot of cases it helps, especially with competitive keywords like yours.

Not wanting to teach you to suck eggs, but although on-page keyword optimisation is a fundamental part of SEO it is rarely enough on its own to get you ranked top of google for competitive keywords.

Hope that helps

[bradkrussell]

Justin is correct. Your title tag is (in affect) targeting 'Windows on Mac" - whereas you are trying to get the on-page report for the term 'Mac Windows'. They are two separate terms according to Google + SEOmoz.

[cbielich]

ditto on Justin

[CodeWeavers]

Yeah, and of course, we actually want both those keyword pairs, so I'm kinda damned if I do, and damned if I don't. But thanks for the great feedback; much appreciated.

[JustinTaylor88]

no not really damned if you do, damned if you don't... this problem effects us all, we all want to rank for our primary keywords.

if you can't target both, chose your primary target for your homepage and target and internal landing pages for others keywords, ok the page won't be as authoritative, but i have seen on many occasions sub pages out ranking home pages for specific keywords

don't give up bud, just work harder and smarter for those other keywords... and don't forget the long tail