An accidental discovery about SERP

Monday, May 26, 2008, 1:27 PM
Website Design by John

For the sake of information, SERP = search engine result page. It is, essentially, how high up you appear in search rank.

Now, if you follow this blog much, you may recall that I use a local classifieds/events website called PunxsyPage.com as a testbed for a lot of my new web stuff, particularly search engine optimization. This last week I've been putting the website through a major overhaul because the template system I am now using far exceeds what had been running on PunxsyPage in terms of server-side efficiency.

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In the process of redesigning the website, I didn't want to abandon a lot of the old code for the site, since it really isn't rational to spend a couple days banging out new code for something that already works well.

So, for the most part I went through and did a quick replace of the way the content is handled. In the old version, content was echoed out as the database served. So, if you had ten items, you got ten echo commands. It causes the page to load in pieces.

In the new template-driven system, everything is loaded into a set of variable for various parts of the template. Sidebar goes into a variable name $sidebar and keywords go into a variable for that metatag and so forth. Then when all the content is ready, the system plugs all the variables into the template and pushes everything out the door in a single shot.

In the process of doing this, I screwed up my SERPs for PunxsyPage. Before it had consistently been the #1 result for a lot of the listed events in the area in Google search. But, it fell below the Chamber's events page (we actually share content with the Chamber, so the Chamber's website acts as a very good control in any SEO experiments I do).

It took me a few minutes of going into Google and searching before I realized that the title tag wasn't being filled with the individual event title. Instead it was just belching out the default title about events and classifieds that it is always programmed to do when it has nothing else. So, in SERP, it was falling below the equally neutral results from the Chamber.

Now, the Chamber has a PR of 6 and PunxsyPage has a PR of 5 (the Chamber's site is about 10 years older, and that weighs a ton in PR). So, in a push for SERPs, the Chamber's website will win every time. All I had accomplished was accidentally creating the push because I had forgotten that the old system and new system handle page titles differently.

Oooops.

On the upside, it yielded the interesting discovery that page title counts a ton in SERP.

Would I prefer to have not learned that? Yeah.

But, since it happened, I might as well convey that in the voodoo of Google search, it is clear that messing up your title tags will lose you a couple spots in SERP.

Ouch.

On the upside, with the problem fixed, by this time next week I should have a sense of how much Google returns value once the title tags are working properly.

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Welcome!

Wonder where to start with your web design business?

This blog follows along with my efforts to build and grow a website design business, Pro Content and Design.

The goal of this blog is to fill in blanks that may be empty as you get your business rolling.

This blog, particularly the source code section, is not intended for beginners. If you are not comfortable with databases, Ajax, DOM objects and other advanced methods, I strongly suggest you go take a look over at W3 Schools before even reading -- let alone tinkering with -- any of the code here.

I hope this blog has some value to web designers as they attempt to get their businesses going.

Good luck, and happy reading.

Thank you,
John Crawford
Pro Content and Design