Taming the Title Tag

Michael Buczek - April 24, 2008

When it comes to optimizing your website, there are a lot of things you need to do to compete with the big boys. You must make sure that you have proper metatag structure, relevant page copy, a strategic linking plan, up-to-date search engine friendly web design, proper site architecture, a blog, videos, social media and much much, more. Discouraged yet? Don’t be. Let’s take it one step at a time. First, pick a keyword, and just one keyword for your page. For the sake of conciseness, I am saving how to pick a keyword for another post.

This is an important step, because in most cases this will be the first thing the search engine AND the searcher sees regarding your site information. The title tag should contain your keyword and some supporting words to describe what will be on the page. If your keyword happens to be “Ski Boots”, you will want to include that and make it clickable. Something like “Men’s Ski Boots for Sale” would be a good title. This is good for both the searcher and the search engine, as it tells both exactly what someone will find on the page.

Quick and Dirty Tips

• Include Keyword
• Make it Clickable — Think “why would someone want to click on it”
• Unique — Make it different from all of your other pages and competitor’s websites. Perform some searches for your keywords and see what comes up.
• Limit to 70 Characters with spaces.

Title tags, as well as metatags in general are only a small piece of the SEO pie. Stay tuned for more help with metatags, keyword targeting and content optimization tips.