Google’s most recent Webmaster Central Blog post, entitled Better page titles in search results covers the basics of how page titles and descriptions (called snippets) are generated.

A few things to note:

• Best practices dictates you write your own title tags.
• Best practices also dictates you write your own descriptions that are concise and easy to read.
• Algorithms may generate alternative titles:
• Mainly used to result in a higher clickthrough rate
• May be used if title is absent or non-descriptive
• May be used if the same title is present on every page
• May be used if there is only slight variation between titles
• May be used in the place of overly long or hard-to-read titles

In the New Year, Webmasters should take note that Google has updated their Site title and description page (including an eight minute video of Matt Cutts discussing optimizing websites for Google and snippets).  This page also offers a solution for Webmasters frustrated with titles and descriptions they did not write appearing in search engine results pages (SERPs).  If you have found that your titles or descriptions appearing in SERPs are sourced from the Open Directory Project (ODP), or DMOZ, there is a solution!

The following code, inserted in the head section of your code, will tell all robots not to display information from the ODP with regard to your snippets.

If you are only having an issue with Google displaying ODP data, use the following code:

Please note that this code will need to be crawled by the robots before you may see a change in the SERPs.

If you are unfamiliar with the ODP / DMOZ:

The Open Directory Project (http://www.dmoz.org) is a human-edited directory of the Web that is maintained by a global community of volunteer editors and is touted as the most comprehensive directory out there.  There is no cost to submit your site to the ODP.

Part of any good link building campaign will require you to request links from other websites. You might talk to vendors, customers, or fellow members of the industry. Regardless, all of your requests will need to have one thing in common: you must incentivize them.

Usually, the best incentive you can offer is a link in kind. There are number of creative ways you can trade links, some of which include:

Guest Blog Posts – Guest posts are a classic way to trade links with another site. If the other site has an authoritative blog, you could be getting a good link that your competitors don’t have. The best part is that this can work both ways. You can write a post for their site that includes links to your site or the other site can write for you – then post a link on their site saying “read the guest post we wrote here.” If possible, each party can write a guest post for the maximum amount of links.

Interviews – Like the guest blog post, granting an interview with someone at your company or interviewing a leader at another company is a set-up to produce more content for your site via article, blog post, etc. As an added advantage, whoever participates in the interview establishes authority and thought leadership within their industry – which builds the company’s reputation and has inherent value for future link building.

Grant Special Acknowledgement – You will want to keep it relevant to your site, but you can create a page or blog post to give awards, spotlights, trusted partner status, etc. to companies you want a link from. Eager to brag about their acknowledgement, they’ll likely link to your site when they mention it.

By creating a well worded personal approach to other websites with a good incentive, you gain a number of opportunities for great link building and networking.

For many websites that want to increase their SEO, they must also increase their onsite content. For some companies the question of what to add to their site is an easy one. Still, others struggle with the concept; what will their target audience want to see and what is the company actually able to produce?

In many cases, an FAQ or a Q/A page is a good fit. It’s not too difficult to get into the head of your audience and anticipate what questions they may have about your product or business. However, if you are not sure what your audience wants to know (or you want to expand your page with even more questions), you can invite visitors to your site to participate.

Set up a form that allows visitors to submit their questions. Monitor what comes in and keep an eye out for question trends. You can add more common questions to your FAQ, or write short articles or blog posts for other questions.

Don’t forget, you can further optimize this page by inserting links to relevant pages on your site – including contact pages, services pages, and even other answers. In the process, not only will you be optimizing, you may also be learning about the needs and concerns of your target audience.