Title Tags and SEO
Are you looking for a quick fix to improve your websites rankings within the search engines? If so, then it’s time to take a look at your title tags.
Simple changes to this area of your website can provide drastic improvements to the performance of a webpage for the keywords you are trying to rank highly within the search engines for.
What is a Title Tag?
A title tag is a piece of HTML code that describes the content of a specific web page. Creating a relevant title tag is one of the most important variables in achieving high search engine positions.
Why are Title Tags so important?
Search engine spiders use these title tags as the main source for determining the page topic. Spiders or crawlers examine the title and then translate the topic of the page. Remember, the text included in the title tag is also the text that will appear in the SERPs (search engine results pages) as the linked title on which users will click to access your page.
How many characters can I use in the Title Tag?
There are many conflicting views on the optimum length of a title tag. In search results, Google currently displays only approximately 65 characters of the title – some engines display more. Also, having a title displayed with too many phrases in it can confuse people when they are looking at the search results. Keeping these points in mind, have the most important keywords at the beginning of your title.
Every page should have a unique Title Tag
A vital aspect of search engine optimisation (SEO) is to ensure you optimise every page on your website (not just your home page). By optimising the title tags of each of your sites “sales pages” you can focus on the specific product/services your business offers. This will allow you to improve your search engine rankings for dozens/hundreds of keywords related to your business.
I hope you have found this post useful. Please feel free to add your comments below.
3 Responses to “Title Tags and SEO”
sekids @ SpeedPPC Says:
December 18th, 2009 at 3:33 pm
Title tag is really important from the point of SEO and PPC campaign. It can help you to get lower cost per click if your title tag contains the keyword that you are bidd.ing on
mark rushworrth Says:
January 7th, 2010 at 1:48 pm
One of the best tips i have used is to add sales terms into a title tag. this increases conversions and helps you rank for lower volume but higher converting phrases. heres the one i use the most:
{term} for sale at {site name}
this helps you rank for people searching for a ‘for sale’ item as well as general sale/sales items i.e. ‘furniture sale’ etc as long as its supported by the term and site content.
thats another useful thing, dont add anything in your title tag that isnt supported by your pages text content as you’re just wasting time if you do. you can always rewrite descriptions and texts to support a better title tag.
Rona Bassett Says:
January 23rd, 2010 at 10:10 am
Great stuff guys. Most end users are bamboozled by the SEO companies.
Remember that the most important title tag is the one inside the header, which contains the text at the top of the page, eg:-
(meta tags, stylesheet reference etc)
This text appears in the very top line above the browser buttons and is the most important of all
the actual content of you Web page