About

The Attention Project, is a brand new online project by Mike Parker looking at the current attention economy and trying to carve out its own space.

First I’ll tell you a little bit about me, then I’ll explain a little more about the project.

I’m a 30 something web guy. I’ve tried to be a little more specific than that but I just couldn’t find a single pigeon hole to sit in. I can tell you where I work though, I’m a partner at Orange Bus, an innovative web design and digital strategy company. I’m a busy guy with a family, dogs and a great business to help run, and now this project too.

This Project

Working as a client focussed web company, we’re continually asked about SEO. In fact you can switch the term SEO for “Google”, because that’s always the focus. “How can you help us climb to the top of Google?”

I’d say that’s almost always the wrong question. Really their goal isn’t to be at the top of Google, their real goal is to attract and keep the attention of their target audience.

So instead of the focus being on Google, the focus should be on creating great content, delivering a great service, or plain and simply being remarkable. That’s what this project aims to look at, what steps can we take to deliver real value to our audience and how can we measure that.

Day 41: Jan 17 Improve your search engine ranking: Change your site title

I came across this post the other day Proper Title Tags Will Earn You More Money Online, in fact that wasn’t the title of the post, it was the pages title. The posts title was “Your Crappy Title Tag Is Costing You Money – Are You On My List”. The post took a look, and a swipe, at some of the top 100 money making blogs failure to capitalise on an opportunity to inform the search engines, and their vistors what their sites are about.

It’s widely accepted, that one of the most important factors that search engines use in determining a pages rank, is the pages title. With that in mind what does my site title say? Well at the moment “The Attention Project”. Am I, as Ryan says, missing a trick? If I am, then I should try and correct this. First I’ll have to identify what message I want to put out there. How can I encapsulate the essence of the site in a few words?

Ryan posted 7 guidelines:

  1. Use page related, relevant keywords.
  2. If possible, use the keyword near the beginning.
  3. Avoid using a keyword phrase as your entire site title.
  4. DO NOT use your keyword phrase more than once in your title – it looks like spam, and it won’t help you
  5. Don’t use ALL CAPS in your title, it’s very noobish, and the search engine’s don’t like it.
  6. Keep it around 50-60 characters for best results.
  7. Capitalize each word in your title.

With those guidelines to follow, what should the site title be? First off I need to determine what the site is about and who I’m targeting.

  • The site is an experiment
  • It’s looking at how to attract attention
  • It’s about how to keep that attention

So the site title is: “How to attract and keep attention | The Attention Project”, I don’t think that’s good enough. Is my target audience likely to search on that? No. Probably not. I’m my site’s target audience, I’m trying to build a successful blog, I’m looking at ways to achieve that, and I’m documenting that journey. So if I know my audience, as I’m among them, then perhaps a better use of the title may be: “Tips for a successful blog | The Attention Project” – not strictly true at the moment but the site should in time offer this.

So I’ve got my new title. Anything else I need to do? Well I could move the keyword to the beginning, and capitalize each word. Which leaves us with: “Blog Tips To Make You Successful | The Attention Project”. But that’s switched the meaning, and sounds more like a self help guide. So finally I think: “Blog Tips To Make Your Site Successful | The Attention Project”

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