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.

__________________
Steve Castaneda, Realtor
Keller Williams Realty
The MyHomeHouston Team

Specializing in Houston Real Estate. Feel free to visit my Houston Real Estate Blog or read about Real Estate Technology for agents.

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

__________________
Eric Blackwell
Technologist, SEO Specialist and Consultant

Louisville Real Estate My Home Real Estate Site

Search Engine Marketing, Coaching & Custom WP Blogs Learn how to get the MOST out of your already awesome REW site.

Real Estate Industry Watch - Real Estate Industry News Blog Get up to date info on the Real Estate Industry

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

__________________
Steve Castaneda, Realtor
Keller Williams Realty
The MyHomeHouston Team

Specializing in Houston Real Estate. Feel free to visit my Houston Real Estate Blog or read about Real Estate Technology for agents.

Why not write 2 articles and cover both bases?

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
Technologist, SEO Specialist and Consultant

Louisville Real Estate My Home Real Estate Site

Search Engine Marketing, Coaching & Custom WP Blogs Learn how to get the MOST out of your already awesome REW site.

Real Estate Industry Watch - Real Estate Industry News Blog Get up to date info on the Real Estate Industry

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

__________________
Eric Blackwell
Technologist, SEO Specialist and Consultant

Louisville Real Estate My Home Real Estate Site

Search Engine Marketing, Coaching & Custom WP Blogs Learn how to get the MOST out of your already awesome REW site.

Real Estate Industry Watch - Real Estate Industry News Blog Get up to date info on the Real Estate Industry

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

__________________
Steve Castaneda, Realtor
Keller Williams Realty
The MyHomeHouston Team

Specializing in Houston Real Estate. Feel free to visit my Houston Real Estate Blog or read about Real Estate Technology for agents.

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.

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.

__________________
Steve Castaneda, Realtor
Keller Williams Realty
The MyHomeHouston Team

Specializing in Houston Real Estate. Feel free to visit my Houston Real Estate Blog or read about Real Estate Technology for agents.

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

__________________
Eric Blackwell
Technologist, SEO Specialist and Consultant

Louisville Real Estate My Home Real Estate Site

Search Engine Marketing, Coaching & Custom WP Blogs Learn how to get the MOST out of your already awesome REW site.

Real Estate Industry Watch - Real Estate Industry News Blog Get up to date info on the Real Estate Industry