Title tags, meta tags, and keyword tags are all important elements for search engine optimization (SEO), ESPECIALLY the TITLE TAG, which is critical.

Currently, an individual post page's title tag is automatically created from the post's title -- this is pretty limiting. There should be fields in the individual post entry page of the dashboard that enables customized title tags for each individual post.

This is extremely important!

Wordpress has several plugins that do this, and they're considered to be in the top 10 most important plugins list!

Thanks,

Mike

You could do this with some custom fields (check the MT4.1 beta).

Is spec'ing a custom title really that much better than a well-crafted title from your template?

Hi Danwolfgang,

Thanks for replying!

In most cases, yes, absolutely. For example, let's say you want to write a post about Apple products, and hope to gain search engine rank for several apple product names. Important keywords may include "iphone, ipod, ipod mini, ipod shuffle, iTunes" etc....and you might therefore want to make that list your <title tag>, or a variation of it. However, that list would make a very boring title -- I would rather call the post something like -- "Apple is the best consumer electronics designer ever." (That's not a great an example, but you get the idea.)

In other words, a great title does NOT always equate to a great title tag...especially when you're trying to be clever with a title. In fact, I would say, it usually does not. Balancing clever, interesting titles with search optimized text is always a challenge with MT...something that multiple solutions exist for in WP.

Thanks,

Mike

Suggestion: just actually link to these multiple plugins.
Sorry, but I'm honestly finding your descriptions to vary from either weird to just confusing, and it might help if you just pointed at what you were talking about.

I'm also getting the impression you don't seem to think you can do whatever you want to the bit of template that generates your titles. Whereas Wordpress seems to only offer the_title, MT simply lets you specify:

such as:

and not have the entry title in there at all if you don't want.

"mbouteneff" is bang on with WP and it's SEO options. You don't have to write a single bit of code to optimize your SE ranking. I have two WP blogs and both were Google PR3's within a week.

Personally, I'm really thinking of giving up on MT. I'm spending more time on design and layout than I am on content and it's costing me money. There's my 2 cents worth anyway.

Really? Because plenty of WP people seem to spend a lot of time telling you how to do optimize your pages. I fail to see the significant difference between needing to find out about some plugin and installing it to cause magic results, and simply using the basic template set MT offers you from the start. But that's just me. There are some fundamental differences between the way the two templating engines work, and if you don't like it, that's fine. WP will be there when you return.

I also fail to see how your blog becoming PR3 within an week is indicative of anything whatsoever beyond that it happened to get spidered quickly, which has little to do with SEO and more to do with simply getting a link or two out in public via pinging the various blog services. PR3 is low.