Does the order of keywords matter in a page title?

Question

Stack Overflow has made a change to their page titles such that the most popular tag for a question appears at the start of the title. The change is being deployed across the network, so check out the page title for this question.

Compare the question title and the page title for this question:

• Question title:
  Is it safe to use ASP.NET MVC3 RC?

• Page title:
  asp.net mvc - Is it safe to use ASP.NET MVC3 RC? - Stack Overflow

I understand the change to try and stop scrapers ranking higher on Google. Adding the most popular tag to the page title seems like a good idea.

However, a side effect that I'm noticing is that with a lot of tabs open, now the only part of the title that I can see is the tag. Would moving this keyword to later in the page title harm these efforts to improve SEO?

Possible title:
Is it safe to use ASP.NET MVC3 RC? - asp.net mvc - Stack Overflow

Answer 1

Yes, putting important keywords closer to the beginning of a title does help SEO. SEOmoz's ranking factors survey agrees, as do other sources.

Keyword Use Anywhere in the Title Tag
66% very high importance

Keyword Use as the First Word(s) of the Title Tag
63% high importance

Keyword Use in the Root Domain Name
60% high importance

Keyword Use Anywhere in the H1 Headline Tag
49% moderate importance

Side rant: Personally I hate this because it actually devalues user experience in many cases. For home pages, if you are a company selling red widgets a spammy title like "red widgets, widgets, blue widgets" can be more successful that "Awesome WidCo plc - suppliers of red widgets".

I believe the site name should come first on the home page, but SEO forces you to do the opposite.

Answer 2

Sorry, but I respectfully disagree. I'm not trying to step on anyone's toes here by being contradictory on the subject, but the people that participate in those surveys get paid to rank websites higher. Usually on a contract basis, and often don't stick around for the next algorithm to kick in. They also execute the technique with finesse. In addition, they usually work for eCommerce websites that pay Google upwards of $10-20K per month in ad spend MINIMUM.

YES, it will rank your site better. BUT, you have to do it correctly AND with the end user in mind, and NOT by focusing on the search engine. Google HATES when you make changes to benefit your ranking instead of focusing on what's best for the user. It also hates when you make abrupt structure/format changes site wide for no other reason than "SEO." We've been penalized for months before for just a couple (15-20) 301 keyword page mergers, and that's with a high level ad spend.

Stack exchange is unfortunately doing it incorrectly. I'm not saying it'll get us penalized, but what we're doing is essentially keyword stuffing. Mainly because we've stuffed keywords in the title AFTER the fact, and only for the benefit of higher rankings.

Don't take my word for it. Go check out the SEOmoz Q&A section. Notice any non-human keyword-stuffing behavior?

Sorry for the rant. Feel free to down vote me all you want!!!