The Title Tag & Search Engine Optmisation

Title Tags are one the big three when it comes to Search Engine Optimisation – the other factors of high importance being the copy or content of a web page and the inbound links to the page. A few quick fixes to a title tag can bring big improvements to search engine rankings.

SEOmoz ranks the Title Tag as the most important on-page factor that contributes to SEO.

What needs to be in the Title Tag?

A Title Tag is usually limited to 70 characters, including spaces. There is nothing stopping it from being longer, but search engines like Google will only take into account the first 70 characters when ranking a website.

Since 70 characters isn’t much – 10-12 words at the most – it is important to ensure that the Title Tag contains no wasted characters. I usually look to include either two, or three pieces of information in a Title Tag. These are:

• Name – The business or website name
• Keywords – The subject or purpose of the page
• Location keywords (if required) – The location that the information on the page is targeted towards

I try to base the keywords used in a Title Tag around what a potential visitor to the page will search for. Google’s Keyword Tool can be used show what the most popular search terms are likely to be.

The importance of keyword position.

SEOmoz also gives high importance to the position of keywords in the Title Tag. In general, most websites will have the company name as the first words in the title tag, which may be missing a trick. Unless you have a well known brand, most of your visitors won’t be specifically searching for your company.

I’d usually try to make the first words in the Title Tag the keywords that potential visitors will be searching on.

Bringing it all together.

Using an example of a client I have worked with, Google’s Keyword Tool shows that by far the most popular terms that users looking for a removal company in Newcastle upon Tyne search for are ‘Removals Newcastle’. Therefore a good Title Tag would be:

“Removals in Newcastle upon Tyne – Company Name”

This Title Tag sticks to all the rules discussed above and comfortably comes in well under the 70 character limit. I’d be pretty happy with that.

Summary.

There are millions of opinions about the best way to do every aspect of SEO, but the techniques described above are my personal preference and the way I do things.

One thing is certain, though, and that is the massive importance of the Title Tag when it comes to SEO.