SEO Article Series - Guide to SEO Title Tags

These SEO articles are excerpted from an SEO article series on creating search engine optimized meta tags. This is a short summary on SEO title tags and goes along with Titles, Description and Keyword Meta Tags, Guide to SEO Meta Description Tags and Guide to SEO Meta Keyword Tags to complete the series.

Guide to SEO Title Tags
by Valerie DiCarlo - VDC Enterprises, LLC

Of all the tags, the title tag is one of the most important factors in achieving high search engine rankings.  A title tag is essentially a piece of HTML code that creates the words that appear in the top bar of your Web browser.  Additionally, the title tag is used to describe your page when someone adds it to their "Favorites" or "Bookmarks" lists.

In addition to being one of the most important factors in how a search engine may decide to rank your web page, all major crawlers use the text of your title tag as the text they use for the title of your page in the listings that serve as the clickable link in the search results.

For example, when a user goes to Google (or any search engine of choice) and types a keyword phrase in the search bar, the text link listings that appear in the Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs) are the title tags for the listed sites.

Key Considerations When Developing Your Title Tags:

• Conduct page specific keyword research and analysis to determine searched key phrases and create page specific title tags using 1st tier keyword terms with prominence and proximity in a short descriptive fashion.
• The title tag text will be used as your title in crawler-based search engines, as well as the title in bookmarks and in browser title bars.
• Keep in mind that this is the text that searchers scan when making a decision on what link to click.
• A good, descriptive, targeted title utilizing main keyword phrases with proximity and prominence will drive more clicks than a vague one.
• Align your title tags to the specific content of the page, aiming for an optimal length of about 10 words.
• Don’t use the same title tag for all pages in the site.
• Use keyword rich, descriptive title tags targeted to the page content.
• Creating a page specific title tag - for each site page can influence the indexing of individual pages on your site.