Quick Tips on getting Ranked on Google – Title Tag
This article forms part of a series of quick tips for search engine optimisation on this blog. Please also see Quick Tips for OnPage Meta Descriptions and Quick Tips for OnPage Meta Keywords which explain more details about OnPage SEO Techniques for Search Engine Ranking.
The title tag is very important for your web pages and plays an important part of the overall ranking process within Google and BING search engines. The title tag is just one factor involved with OnPage SEO techniques (see other blogs for more details on other OnPage ranking techniques and tips).
The title tag shows on the SERP (search engine results page) when you search for something within Google or any of the other search engines. The title tag is shown as the first line for each result (for Google in blue) and forms the link to the actual website when clicked. It is important to ensure that your title tags are different for each page on your website, and that the title tag accurately describes the content of your page.
It’s important with all content on your website to try to keep a page strictly relevant to a particular topic. If you put too much information on a web page it will be difficult for the search engines to determine the conversation that’s going on and it will create mixed messages – which will not be good for your overall ranking.
Remember that the title tag can only display about 8 words before elipses will show on the line, so make sure that you have your keywords at the start of the text and DO NOT waste the text with the name of your company – if someone wants to find your business they will just type in your company name and this will NOT rely on the title tag. The title tag in combination with the FIRST H1 tag on your page plus your content text are just about the most important factors to consider for OnPage SEO. Content is always king, so make sure that you discuss completely relevant information on your page relating to the title tag.
Don’t add ‘stop words‘ within the title tag either! Stop words are words like; if, but, the, not, etc. these words are not required and are a waste of your title tag (especially when you consider you only have about 8 words). You can try putting keywords in CAPITALS to make them stand out when someone is looking at the search engine results page. If any keywords match the phrase or keywords entered in the search box, then these will be boldend by the search engine – so optimise your keywords for the topic and search phrase – perhaps using the Google Keyword Tool – freely available.
- Don’t repeat multiple times the same word in the title.
- The title of the page is the most important ranking criteria for search engines. Take care to build good titles to be well ranked, it’s very important!
- Don’t create titles entirely in uppercase letters.
- You can code accentuated letters in HTML (é = é).
- Your page title must be 7 to 10 words long and must contain important and descriptive words for your activity.
- Avoid titles like: “Homepage”, “Welcome on our web site”. They don’t describe your activity and what the end user will find in your pages.
- Every page of your site must have its own title, representative of its content.
- Of course, every page of your site must have a title… 🙂
- Avoid the lists of words separated by commas: write a real sentence.
- Don’t begin your title by a space.
- HTML code: <title>Your title</title>
- In the HTML code, place the title as high as possible (close to the <HEAD> tag).
The “Quick Tips” is a series of articles with short tips and tricks for various Web Development subjects on search engine optimisation from Micro Update. Other subjects being covered and included with Micro Updates SEO packages are:
- Homepage Optimization
- Keyword Phrase Optimization
- Fixing the text links
- Image Optimization
- Keyword Research
- Header Tags Optimization
- Title Tag Optimization
- Meta Tag Optimization
- Alt Tag Optimization
- Anchor Tag Optimization
- Meta tags placement
- HTML Sitemap Creation
- XML Sitemap Creation
- Meta Tags Placements
- Suggestions on Content Optimization
- Complete Image Optimization
- Traffic Tracking Codes
- Remove Spam links
- Google Sitemap
- Optimization of textual content of your Home Page and key inner pages with keyword placement within content
- Creation of Internal Linking Network
