Professional SEO: Optimize Your Title Tags
For a Higher Search Engine Ranking
Arguably the most important element on your web
pages is your title tags. The title tags tell the search engines what
your page is about. Applying this free expert SEO by optimizing the
title tags of your pages can often generate a quick significant increase
to your ranking.
For expert SEO write your tags for humans.
The words in the title tag are what appear in the
clickable link on the search engine results page, optimizing them could
bring you more clicks too. So write for humans. This is important. Keep
in mind while you do your SEO work that the search engines want to be as
human-like as they can, and they are getting pretty good at it. If you
strive to provide your visitors with what they are looking for as easily
as possible the engines will notice.
Title Tags Should Contain Specific Keyword Phrases
How you optimize the specific keyword phrases in your title tags
depends heavily upon whom your target audience is and what you are using
your website for. For instance, if you use your website primarily to
steer business to your local brick-and-mortar store, you would probably
want to put your location in your title as well as what you sell.
For example, if your company is "Bills Appliance Repair.," an
appliance repair store in Stockton, California, you shouldn’t place only
the words "Bill’s Appliance Store” in your title tag, but instead use
something like "Appliance Sales and Service – Stockton, CA”
If your site is primarily for selling widgets online, then forget
your location, use keywords in your title about widgets. Do keyword
research to find the best phases for your title.
Use a keyword tool to research your title keyword phrases
For truly expert SEO, you should use one of the keyword tools that
are available online. I use WordTracker, but there are a number of them
to choose from. Don’t guess at what people search for. The only way of
really knowing is by using one of these tools. It’s worth the money.
Keep the length of the title tag to 70 characters (including spaces).
Search engines often truncate the title after 68-70 characters. This
means you can use approximately 6-7 words. This will increase the chance
of getting your words to display in the major search engines.
Placing a keyword phrase at the start of the title tag gives it more
value as far as the search engines are concerned. Avoid using single
word keywords, they are usually very hard to obtain a good ranking with.
Use two or more key words in a keyword phrase. The longer keyword
phrases are easier to obtain higher rankings with.
Make the title appeal to your potential visitors
Make the title tag appealing to the eye. Make sure you write you
title for human eyes. On the search engine results pages your title is
the first thing the searcher sees, so make it appealing.
Make the first letter a capital letter, and use lowercase for the
rest of the letters in each keyword. You don’t need to capitalize
connecting words like “the”, “of”, etc. Humans find it easier on the
eyes.
Try to keep title tags as unique as possible: Each page on your site
should be unique and so should your title tags. Not only do unique title
tags make the site more descriptive and navigable to a person, they also
help search engines learn more about your page and site.
Keep your title relevant to your body copy
Write title tags that are relevant to the content on your page.
Search engines compare text in the title tag against text content on
your page to rate relevancy. If the two are not related your ranking
will be lowered.
Another reason to make your title relevant to the text on your page
is because if someone visits your site from a search engine, and
discovers your title is miss-leading, they immediately click back to the
search engine to try the next listing. This is known as a “bounce”, and
too many bounces will lower your ranking.
Title tags are crucial in obtaining high search engine rankings.
Write a short, concise and attractive description for each of your web
pages. Most of your competitors have not optimized their title tags.
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