Recently, I changed the title tags for a site that I work on SEO for.  See the changes made:Previous title tag: Flat Fee Listing in MLS, Flat Fee MLS Listing For Sale By Owner.Revised:  Flat Fee MLS Listing | Sell Your Home for a Flat FeeShortly after this change was made, the site dropped from a #1 ranking in Google to #2 for the search phrase flat fee MLS.  The site owner insists the reason is because we removed the second MLS term from the title tag.  While I know keyword density is important within your site content, I've not heard of it being critical within your title tags.  Any opinions out there?  Could removing the 2nd occurrence of MLS from the title tag have made a difference in our ranking?  Has anyone proved this to be the case within their own site experimentations?  Please advise - I either need to prove this guy wrong, or correct my error.
Does keyword density within a title tag make a difference in SEO?
seo;ranking;keywords
I believe your revised version to be much more beneficial.In my experiences when doing seo for our clients, correct keyword placement in Title tags is more important now, than it ever has been.I always follow the 3 golden rules for Title tags:Short but descriptive of, and relevant to the corresponding page's text content.Do not use the same keyword/phrase more than once. (in the Title tag)Also have the actual name of the page in the Title tag. I've seen many cases where clients have worried too much about keywords in the Title tag and completely forgotten to display the name of the page.Good Example:<title>Free Nuts &amp; Bolts | Promotion</title>Poor Example:<title>Buy free nuts & bolts from MyWebsiteName.com</title>Hope this helps :-)