Role of Title Tags in SEO
In today’s highly competitive market scenario, search engine optimization (SEO) is absolutely essential. Web site owners are in a rat race, vying with one another to get to the top of the search engines, battling to stay in the top ten, if not the top five positions. The matter is indeed serious as hundreds of thousands of visitors may be lost if high rankings are not there - which might mean hundreds of thousands of dollars in sales revenue.
What Is A Title Tag?
Here's an example:
<title>Search engine optimization SEO Company Promotion ranking Services internet</title>
NOTE - always remember to close your tags e.g. </TAG>
The title tag is an element in the header part of an HTML page denoted by two tags. It is a fact that the title is displayed in web search results by the vast majority of search engines and most major search engines use a title tag in order to rank your page. Search engines deem the title as a critical piece of information when determining what the content of your website is.
It is widely believed, and rightly too, that title tag is one of the most important parameters that help achieve high search engine rankings.
As a matter of fact title tags are definitely one of the critical factors as far as the algorithmic weight given to them by search engines. Many professionals opine that fixing title tags of Web pages can make meaningful difference to search engine rankings.
Here are the important notes that you need to keep in your mind before creating a title tag:-
" People who have done some research will know that Google currently displays only 65 characters of the title – though some engines display more. If you need a long title make at least the first 66 characters Google-friendly and use the rest for Yahoo. "
" Be careful not to repeat the same word more than twice. "
" Avoid using the same title tag for each page. Every webpage must have a unique title tag. "
" The company name would be preferable to place it at the beginning of the tag if the company is already a well-known brand in the market. "
" If Google or Yahoo crawl the website and find that the title tags that is written are relevant to the page on which they are written, then there is a much greater chance of a good ranking on the engines. "
" It is imprudent trying to fool the search engines by willfully implementing irrelevant titles or over-stuffing the keywords. " |
More important is that you provide your company name and specific keyword phrases in your Title Tag
In the light of this, the question in most people’s minds is what should be the nature of title tags.
The company name would be preferable to place it at the beginning of the tag if the company is already a well-known brand in the market. It is further recommended that some descriptive phrase or two added are also added. There are no hard and fast rules for writing titles but there are some guidelines you can follow if you are keen to use title tags to gain higher page rankings.
There are people who desperately attempt to create the perfect title tag, little knowing there no such thing as perfect. The right thing to do would be to experiment different types of writing the company’s name and see which rank higher and which leads to greater conversion.
Professionals suggest that the title tag should be restricted to not more than ninety characters in length. People who have done some research will know that Google currently displays only 65 characters of the title – though some engines display more. If you need a long title make at least the first 66 characters Google-friendly and use the rest for Yahoo.
Some of the erroneous ways of representing Title Tags
There is a tendency among many site owners to take the painless route of placing "Welcome to www.domainname.com" type statements as title tag. This may be wholly inappropriate particularly if the site name is not relevant to the subject. It is to be borne in mind that many search engines use the wording in a title tag as an indication of relevancy to help ranking. Make it a point to use different, but relevant title tag text on each page of your site using the keywords that appear on that page. Be careful not to repeat the same word more than twice.
It is imprudent trying to fool the search engines by willfully implementing irrelevant titles or over-stuffing the keywords. Search engines will soon detect these undesirable tricks and your page ranking will drop. In some cases, the particular page or even the entire site may be removed from the index. Every page should have a unique title. Remember, the search engines rank each page individually, that is why it is important to use proper title tags.
Guidlines for high-quality Title Tags
It is advisable to create the title tags after the text on the page has been written and optimized. It is worthwhile to examine how the SEO copywriter has integrated the keyword/ phrases into the text. It is then easier to write an arresting title tag by choosing the most relevant keyword /phrases that the copy has been woven around. This does not mean you extract a sentence from the content text and reproduce as the title tag.
What is required is a unique sentence that will compel attention. If Google or Yahoo crawl the website and find that the title tags that is written are relevant to the page on which they are written, then there is a much greater chance of a good ranking on the engines. To make things easier, certain development tools are available for this purpose. Content management systems (CMS) and blog software such as WordPress automatically generate the title tag from the information you provide in the site. It is good to know that most of CMS and blog software have workarounds to facilitate customizing the title tags.
Links to More Information and Resources
seomoz - randfish
highrankings - All about titles
For more Search Engine Genie Articles
You may contact us for further details by clicking here or e-mail us at - support@searchenginegenie.com |
