Tag, you’re it! Or, you may well be “it” when you make the best use of your page title tags for Search Engine Optimization (SEO) purposes. Aside from writing quality content, a well-constructed title is the best thing you can do for your web page. A title doesn’t look important when you’re actually viewing the page, but to a search engine those words in the top right are your page’s main topic and gateway. When you search, every result is a page title - and “untitled” stinks. Google usually shuffles them to the back. Even when it doesn’t, untitled pages look kind of dodgy, like an unlicensed hot dog cart with a dirty sign. Sure, it might give you something tasty - and it might give you worms, too.
Do us a favor, will you? Drop by http://www.gill-media.com/WebDesign.php and check out the title. If you coded it in raw HTML it would look like this:
<head>
<title>Custom Web Site Design Services by Gill Media - your affordable web site design solution</title>
</head>
We used this title for three reasons:
- Keyword Density: We want people (and search engines) to find us through as many different searches as possible. A keyword-dense title helps us do this.
- Optimum Cutoff Point: Google only displays a limited number of characters. You should (and we did) get the page’s purpose across in the first 60 characters, counting spaces.
- Sensible Branding: Our title puts the GILL Media brand in proper context. It tells people what we do - not just that this page belongs to us.
This is one way to optimize your title, but it’s not the only way. Human beings ultimately determine your site’s popularity. You have to anticipate their preferences. That’s what make titling something of an art.
Here are some alternate ideas:
- Separate Brand and Title: Use a divider like “-, ” “>” or “|,” to separate your company name from the individual page title. “Gill Media - Internet marketing Blog” is an example of this. This works well when you want to promote the brand over any particular product or service, or if your business has a certain aesthetic that’s served by fewer words. A discount superstore should pack the keywords in but a funeral home probably shouldn’t.
- Title Before Brand: You might want to put the title before your brand. Use a divider if you like. This is a good idea when your business distributes another company’s products or services. Put that brand (which from your perspective is your page topic or product) ahead of your own.
Every business has its own style. When you’re looking to title a web page, think about what that is. In the next article in this series, we’ll cover five rules to follow when you’re titling a web page.
Tags: Google, page title, Search Engine Optimization, seo, title tags
This entry was posted on Friday, April 4th, 2008 at 4:41 pm and is filed under Internet Marketing, Search Engine Optimization. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
