Using Question Marks in Titles and H1

[RESteve]

In your experience, do you see it your SEO efforts being positive or negative when putting a question mark in the content title and H1 tags? Do you notice any effect at all, or should I not really worry about it?

Thank you for any assistance.

[Eric Blackwell]

Steve..

I don't see many sites at all using question marks in that way...

Are you thinking about doing a title tag such as:

Want to Search for Louisville Real Estate?

Not quite sure of what you are considering...

Eric

[RESteve]

Steve..

I don't see many sites at all using question marks in that way...

Are you thinking about doing a title tag such as:

Want to Search for Louisville Real Estate?

Not quite sure of what you are considering...

Eric

Hey Eric,
Exactly. An article title including a question. Should I just rephrase it from a question to a statement?

[REW Christian]

Why not write 2 articles and cover both bases?

[Eric Blackwell]

Steve;

Great question in my opinion...here's why I haven't tried it, (and why I think we haven't seen it tried that much...)

1. Questions need to begin with Who, What, Where, Why, How, etc...
2. Most SEs read the title tag Left to Right, giviing more weight to the words that come first and paying CAREFUL attention to 2, 3, and 4 word combinations. (at least that's what my testing shows...please feel free to test and post on that.)

If you buy into #1 and #2, then the title tag I described above would be less than optimal for SEO purposes--(starting with Who, What, etc...)

For that reason, I have never tried it. My guess is that's why others haven't as well. However--it would be an excellent testing thing to do (NOT with your main site--but with a test site) and see if a) you can get it to rank and b) does it improve the CTR of the site...

Interesting idea...

Perhaps others have tried this out and can offer some thought...

Best;

Eric

[Eric Blackwell]

Steve;

A quick and dirty test might be an REW blog post titled each way with similarly structured (but different) content. Possibly you could target it to a slightly less cometitive environment--Like City Condominiums or some such.

Then sit back and see which post ranks higher...

Whaddya think?

Eric

[RESteve]

Steve;

A quick and dirty test might be an REW blog post titled each way with similarly structured (but different) content. Possibly you could target it to a slightly less cometitive environment--Like City Condominiums or some such.

Then sit back and see which post ranks higher...

Whaddya think?

Eric

I think that sounds cool - how would I check the "rankings" of the post?

[Gerry]

I have no empirical evidence for my own belief, which is that "Mike Real Estate" will rank a page (for "mike real estate") as well or almost exactly as well as "Why buy Mike Real Estate?"

If I have no evidence, why should I even post? I guess because every opinion has value if it comes with the right disclaimers.

I'd be careful with that test you guys are brewing up. If I'm right and Google doesn't care about your h1 subtleties, then you might be thrown off the scent when Google makes a distinction elsewhere. In other words, how will you be certain that the two pages' disparate rankings aren't caused by another distinction between the articles? Damn this "science" we're concerned with.

[RESteve]

I still haven't' attempted it, but was mostly curious because I tend (for some odd reason) to write my articles in response to a question from clients, even myself.

The title to the articles are usually the question, so I just wanted to be sure I wasn't shooting myself in the foot by having a question mark in there.

[Eric Blackwell]

Gerry;

You are correct that preparing a test to correctly isolate and test the variable you want in the algorithm is a PAIN...Hundreds of other variables to keep still..very hard to do!

Eric