One of the most important factors in website optimization is your title tag. This is written in the HTML code for your page in the "head" section. Many companies make the mistake of simply using their company name on every page of their site. This is a costly error, since today, search engines use the title plus keywords in your content, as a prime factor your standings. How can you rate higher? Here are some tips for getting better standings through the proper use of title tags.



In addition to ranking, your title tag will appear in the title bar of web browsers for visitors who open your page. Having descriptive title tag is important for visitors as well as for search engines.

A Word About Keywords

Before building any web site or even any web page, it is important that you choose 3 or 4 prime key words and a number of lesser words as well. The web is full of keyword selection tools but we suggest you begin with an excellent keyword tool that is free from Google. We cannot cover this process in this article but we have other articles that go inter this critical area. For each page of your site, select two or three major keywords you believe people will use to find your page in the search engines.

What To Put In Your Tag

Many web sites just have the company name in the title tag. This is great if you are so well known that people will use your name to search when they want to find your site. For example, www.cocacola.com. However, if your company name is less well known than Coca Cola, GE, IBM and others you will do far better to put your name, your city and two or three of your primary keywords. An example for my company web-star.biz might be , "web-star marketing affordable consulting". This title has about 60 characters. It describes the prime keyword for the page and identifies the company name.

If you are going for a local market, we suggest you include your area such as Denver or Denver CO or CO because more and more searches on the internet (about 30% in Nov 2008) are searches for local products and services. It is far easier to get to the top of the search engine pile for a city or state than for the world as there is less competition.

Proper Length

We suggest that you limit your title tag to 65 characters or less as that is the limit most search engines display. Don't waste any characters using "and" or other words that take up space in the prime area.

Critical Title Errors To Avoid

There are three common title errors that really cost. The first is no title. It is amazing to me how many sites have no title. This is very costly as the title is an important factor in telling the search engines what keywords to list you under. The second error is using just your company name. Unless you are world famous, people will not be keying in your name to find you. Use your name but also use two or three prime keywords. The third most common error is using the same title (usually the company name) on every page in your site. Many search engines penalize sites that do this by moving them down in the ranks. More importantly, using a unique title tag for each page allows you to get listed in the search engines for several keywords and make your page content very relevant to those keywords. This will improve your visibility in browser rankings.

Other Considerations To Move Up

There are a few other things you can do to increase your ranking. When you put a hyperlink to another page, instead of using a phrase like "Click here" , use a keyword. As an example, to get visitors to a page on floral prints, use a hyperlink like ">floral prints". Using the keyword in a hyperlink helps the search engines rank that page and your link higher and more specifically.

Also, when you select file names for the pages on your site, use the appropriate keyword. For example, if you save your page on seminars as "p10345987.htm" you will not be as successful as if you assign a page name like "seminars.htm" which contains a prime keyword.

These are a few simple ways to improve your title tag that will result in more visibility, more traffic and more sales.