SEO and the Title Tag

The title tag is an important part of any web page for viewers and search engines. If used properly, it will give your readers an immediate idea of what your website is about. Many SEO companies and webmasters use the title tag to increase their search engine rankings for keywords. You won't find many website without a title tag, but you do find website that misuse it. Here are some guidelines and best practices when using or optimizing a title tag for your (or your customers') websites.

The first thing to do is to look at your content. What message are you trying to get across to your viewers? Are you selling something, offering information, providing services, or building networks? If you are an online store or selling a product, look at your store's content. Do you sell just one thing or many? If you sell one thing, list it in the title. If you sell a large number of products, list the category or industry in the title tag. If you are building a network, who do you want to include in that network? Put that demographic in the title tag. You want your title to be 95% or more relevant to the page content, and you want your readers to instantly know what your site is.

If you are an SEO looking to increase your website's natural search rankings, then the title tag is usually where you start. A lot of SEOs misuse this tag because they feel like the more keywords the put in there the better they will rank. That simply isn't true, and the search engines are smarter than that. Stuffing keyword in the title tag can actually negatively affect your search rankings. Why? Because a lot of keywords in the title tag will lower your title to content relevancy, which will make you rank lower. The search engines try to return the MOST RELEVANT CONTENT so if your title isn't highly relevant to your page, how can your page be highly relevant to a search query? Another misuse of the title tag (I use misuse here in terms of SEO) is to only put the name of the company in the title tag. Especially if your company name is unique and doesn't point to an industry, and people haven't heard of you, then your title has to tell both your name, who you are and what you do. And, it should be able to do this in a maximum of 66 characters. That's how many characters Google search results will show, and that's the maximum for a lot of search engines.

So having to cram so much information into 66 characters to help your readers identify who you are and what you do, to maintain a 95% or higher relevancy ratio, and to have a title that helps you rank for natural search results is a tough task. That's why we see so many SEOs overstuffing it. Take careful consideration when thinking about your page title. I recommend doing some keyword research on your industry to see what people are searching for, and then creating your content and your title/meta tags from this research. This ensures that your whole site's relevancy for good keywords is high, and that your title tag is highly relevant to your site content. In this situation, you have a great foundation for a highly ranking website, and a website that appeals to your viewers. Don't overlook the title tag. Unlike meta tags the title tag is visible to your viewer. After all, it will be one of the main reasons someone will choose to click (or not click) on your website in the search results.