Title tags tutorial

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The title tag (which can be found in your source code and looks like this: <title>Place Title Here</title>) is a critical component of top scoring webpages. While it’s true that inbound links can cause a webpage to rank very well even if the keyword is missing from the body of the page, you’ll seldom find a page without the keyword in the <title> tag that ranks highly for a competitive search.

Here are the basic rules of thumb regarding your title tag:

1. Place only your most important keywords in the title tag
2. Limit the length of your title tag to less than 63 characters, about 7 to 10 words (the maximum number of characters that Google will display)
3. Make the title user (i.e., human) friendly.
4. Limit the use of stop words (such as the, of, that, is, and, to, etc.) and avoid the use of dead weight words (such as Homepage, Home Page, WWW, web, web page, etc)
5. Keep word proximity to a minimum (i.e., place the words within the keyword phrases as close as possible to each other - Chevrolet Corvette rather than Corvette, a legend by Chevrolet).
6. Place your keywords as close as possible to the beginning of the title tag
7. Maintain normal keyword order (dell computer rather than computer dell).
8. Limit the use of repeating the keyword in the title tag, and never repeat keywords one after the other.

Let’s understand each of these rules a bit better.
 

Place only your most important keywords in the title tag

The HTML Title Tag is the the most important place to put your keywords on your web page. There are a couple of reasons for this:

1. The search engines use the keywords in the title tag to help them determine the topic of your website.  
2. Your title tag serves as the header in the search engine results and thus indicates to your (potential) visitors whether or not your site relates to their needs and/or interests (remember, it is not enough to rank well in the search engines, you also need to "persuade" customers to click on your listing in order to actually visit your site.

Given the importance of the title tag you want to make sure not to dilute it with less significant keywords.  And it goes without mention that you don’t want to waste this space with your company name or some meaningless (albeit polite) welcome.  Remember, your goal is to help the search engines categorize your site as well as encourage people to click on your listing in the search results (your company name or a polite welcome do neither of these things).  The only exception to this rule is companies like Amazon and Ebay which are so well known that people use their company name as a primary keyword when searching for their products.  Now while you don’t want to dilute your title tag with less significant keywords, it is advisable to include more than one keyword (if possible) in your title tag as pages tend to rank better when there is more than one keyword in the title tag. 

If you find that you need some help writing your title it may be helpful to look at how your competition write their title tags.  All you have to do is go to Google and enter:  intitle:”put your title keywords here” into the search field.  This will show you a list of sites which have that keyword in their title tag
(it will also give you an idea of how many other pages are competing for the same keywords as we mentioned in our Keyword Analysis Tutorial).
 

Limit the length of your title tag to less than 60 characters

Anything longer and you risk getting part of your title chopped off by some search engines.
 

Limit the use of stop words and avoid the use of dead weight words in your title tag

The search engines have basically learned to ignore dead weight words and as such to include them in your title tag simply wastes your limited character space without adding any value in terms of your rankings or click through rate.  Stop words are also ignored by the search engines, but they at least have the advantage of being more user friendly (if used properly).  As such, it may be worth using them if you can’t write a user friendly title without them.
 

Place your keywords towards the beginning of the title tag

In general, it is better to place your keywords at the beginning of the title tag, although this is not a hard and fast rule.
 

Word Order

The search engines do pay attention to the linear order of your keywords (dell computers will generate far different results than computers dell). Therefore, make sure to position your keywords in the most likely order that real people typically use when expressing them in everyday language. At the same time, be aware of the opportunities that may also be available when you switch the keyword order around. There may be instances where you’ll find that reversing the keyword order sends good traffic with less competition.  Explore this possibility when doing your research and be prepared to construct ancillary pages designed to make the most of such opportunities whenever they’re available.
 

Repetitions

Do not repeat keywords one after the other as in keyword, keyword, keyword.  It may, however, be worthwhile to repeat keywords later on in the title (for example: “Las Vegas - Sites and Attractions in the city of Las Vegas”). Keep in mind, though, that the overwhelming majority of the top scoring sites do not repeat keywords within the title tag.  Once is usually enough.  Take into consideration the typical search-phrase usages as well as research the top scoring pages before you decide.  If you do decide to duplicate your keywords, remember that a real human is going to read that title, make sure it appeals to him/her also.
 

User friendly title tags

The title tag is displayed as the headline for your page in the search results (effictively becoming the headline for your web page).  Its job is to reassure the searcher that, indeed, your page’s content is all about exactly what they are looking for and thereby click on your link.

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This tutorial written by:
Moshe Morris
President of SEMBasics
Chief Research Analyst at Internet Marketing Initiative (www.internetmi.com)

The content on this page is based on SearchEngineNews.com’s e-book Winning The Search Engine Wars.
To learn more about Search Engine News, click here.