SEO Title Tag

The title tag is the most important on-site attribute that tells the search engines what your web page is about.  A well written title tag gives gives a quick summary about the web page while using a key search phrase the page should be found under.

The tag can be found in the section of the website.  It is the blue headline that is seen in the search engine results from Google and Yahoo.  It is also the verbiage located on your browser at the top of the screen in the blue bar.  You can see the title of this page is "SEO Title Tag | MyWebtronics.com".  The Title tag is written in the head section of the website like this:

SEO Title Tag | MyWebtronics.com

Title Tag Format

It is important to get relevant information into the title tag without making it too long.  I recommend that the title tag not be any longer than 70 characters. It is best to keep the page title at the beginning of the title tag.  I recommend the following format: "Page Title | City, State | Business/Site Name".  The business name does not need to come first because most searchers are probably looking for your service, not your specific business name.

Uniqueness

All Title tags should be unique and relevant to the specific page where it is located.  When the SEs rank a page, they rank it based on its perceived authority.  If every page on your site has the same title, the SEs have a hard time determining which page is the most relevant.  If you use Google webmaster tools (and you should), and your web site pages do not have unique title tags, you will receive an alert from Google.  The fact that Google is alerting website owners that duplicate title tags is a problem is enough for me to spend extra time writing unique titles.

For example, lets say that you sell "red widgets".  Your site is filled with information regarding red widgets including reviews, product information and an order form.  By specifying what each page is about, Google knows to send visitors to the relevant page.  If someone searches for "red widget review" and you have a page titled "red widget review" than Google is going to send them to the correct page.  If another searcher enters the phrase "purchase red widget" and you have a page titled, "purchase red widgets", Google is going to give credence to that page and send the visitor to you.  However, if you do not have unique title tags, Google may bypass your site altogether to send their user to a more "relevant" site.

Writing A Title Tag

If you were to purchase ad space in a newspaper, on Google adwords or somewhere else; a great deal of attention would be given to writing the headline.  The Title Tag of a website is a "free" headline that Google displays to potential customers.  It is important that your title capture the readers attention.  Use proper grammar, start the title tag off with a capatilized word and always make sense.  Some title tags are simply jammed with keywords, but these titles are not easy to read.  When your result appears on a page, you are competing with nine other organic results and 5-10 sponsored results.  It is important to make your title stand out so you get the majority of the traffic from the search.  Keep in mind that if the title does not match the content of the page, the search engines will consider that spamming and drop the rank of the page.

Just by spending extra time writing your title tags, you can easily impact your search engine result rankings and increase your site traffic from keywords your site is already found under.