Post details: How to make title elements succeed for SEO and people - Explained by Web Hosting Provider

04/14/08

11:16:27 am, by srose

, 1099 words, 210 views

Categories: SEO and Search Engine Optimization

How to make title elements succeed for SEO and people - Explained by Web Hosting Provider

Make Your Title Elements Succeed for SEO and People

You have your backlinks, your keywords, and your web page content optimized for search engines. Optimize a few more words with your title element, and you've given the page a major SEO advantage. Ignore your title element, and you're giving your competition an advantage instead.

What is the title element?

The <title> element goes within the <head> section of the web page source code. While it's often referred to as the title tag, the correct name for it is title element. It appears in these places:

The anchor text in links with search engine results
A single line at the top of browser windows
Bookmark text when people bookmark a page
Tab titles with tabbed browsers
The drop-down list for Back and Forward buttons
On paper when web pages are printed

Perhaps because it doesn't appear on the web page itself, the title element is often overlooked as part of search engine optimization - web hosting provider explains.

The importance of the title element for SEO

The title element is one of the most important on-page factors for SEO, possibly the most important factor. Search engines give a lot of weight to keywords in the title element as long as they're relevant to the page content. The commonly used term title tag for title element may be why many webmasters don't bother with it, thinking that it's of little importance, like some meta tags. But unlike those meta tags, how you optimize the title element for each page can make a major difference in its search engine results position.

In addition to improving the page's position in search results, a well-written title element can influence more people to click on the link than a poorly written or ignored one. If your site is third in search engine results but has a more effective title element than the first two do, your web page could get more traffic than the pages above it.

Title element limitations

Length: Google truncates titles at about 65 characters in search results although it displays longer titles at the top of the browser tab. It isn't known whether words that appear after the truncation are factored as keywords. The usual advice is to place your most important keywords and other content within those 65 characters.

Formatting: special characters, such as accented characters and the ampersand (&) can be included in title elements. HTML and comments cannot be included in titles. The text will be displayed as it appears in the source code.

Number of titles: each page can have only one title element.

Title location: the title element must be within the <head> section of the document.

Web Hosting Provider Explains - How to make title elements succeed for SEO and people

Uniqueness

Each page should have a unique title element, written for that page. Duplicate titles don't serve their purpose for people, and if every page at a site has the same title, chances are that only one of them will do well in search results.

Content and people

The title is often the first part of the page that visitors see. To motivate people to click on the link, it must convey relevant information about the page before the page is seen. It should look like it's written for people.

Is the main purpose of visitors to that page to make a purchase? To gather information? Use language suited for that purpose.

Expand on meaning. For example, if the page is about a product, don't stop at the product name. Describe the product's features and benefits.

Content and keywords

Include the primary keyword phrase for the page, ideally near the start of the title element. With longer titles, work in other keywords and keyword phrases for that page as well to describe the page content.

If the page is targeted at a specific geographical location, include geographical terms, for example: "Discount Widgets | Springfield, OH."

Content and branding

The company name should appear in the title as a keyword and for branding purposes. Because the home page is bookmarked the most often, a common order is to have the company name first in the home page title and at the end of the title for other pages. An exception is if the company name is a well-known brand name that's searched for often. When it's also a primary keyword, it should always be at the beginning of the title.

Having the company name in the title for every page also helps the site do well in search results for the company name. If your company is being bashed at other websites (if not now, possibly in the future), you want your site to appear before those ones in search results for your company name.

Mechanics: separators and capitalization

Some common separators between title sections:

Pipe or vertical bar (|)
Colon (:)
Comma (,)
Dash (-)
Greater (>)
Right double angle bracket (»)

To keep the title looking tidy, choose only one.

While they all work with search engines, the last one makes the title much longer when users are listening to it via screen reader software. For this usability reason, it's best avoided.

Avoid all caps as well. They're harder to read. Using proper capitalization makes the title look more impressive in search results.

Length

Title elements are an important place for keywords, and they're the text that people see and (ideally) click on in search results. For the first purpose, long titles are good. For the second reason, shorter, punchy titles can be good.

How to test title elements

Note how many visitors are landing on the page via each search engine and for which keywords, correlate those numbers with conversions, and try changing your title. An increase in visitors is good — if it correlates with an increase in conversions too. If it doesn't, try a different title, or go back to the original one.

Don't change titles too often; it takes time for results of changes to be seen. If a particular page is already doing as well as it can for the targeted keywords, don't change the title at all. For pages that are doing fairly well but could be doing better, make small changes at a time, such as adding another keyword.

Remember to change only one variable at a time. If you change anything else at the same time, you won't know which factor(s) contributed to any changes.

Sun	Mon	Tue	Wed	Thu	Fri	Sat
<< <
	1	2	3	4	5	6
7	8	9	10	11	12	13
14	15	16	17	18	19	20
21	22	23	24	25	26	27
28	29	30