An Introduction to Title Tag Optimization

Title tags are the words that appear at the very top of your web browser, and they tell the search engine what the page is about. For example, see the top band of this browser. You will see "Title Tag Optimization - Search Engine Optimization Tips ". This is the title of this page.

Before discussing how to optimize the Title tag, lets see how exactly it looks in your website's HTML code.

< Title of Your Web page Here< /title >
< name="description" content="Brief description of the contents of the page">
< name="keywords" content="keyword phrases that describe your web page">
< /head >
< meta content="Brief description of the contents of the page" name="description" >
< meta content="keyword phrases that describe your web page" name="keywords" >
Title Tags - The Myth
"The Title tag doesn't really do much".

Is that a myth or the truth? Let's see! Title tags function much like the title of a book. Say for example, you need a book on "Search Engine Optimization". You walk into a library, search all the titles, see a book titled "Search Engine Optimization Tips", and take that book. Interestingly, there were some other books in the library, which had more information on Search Engine Optimization than the book you took. But, their title didn't convey that. Search engines also do the same thing: they look at the title of a web page and decide what it is about. There is no doubt among the SEOs regarding the importance of Title tags in Search Engine Optimization. One of the steps to increase a website's rank is optimizing the Title tags.

How to Optimize Title Tag?

Of all the tags, Title tag is definitely the most important when used correctly. When calculating your web page's relevance to a search, most search engines consider the content of the title tag as one of the parameters and display that content in search engine results pages (SERP). Title tag therefore needs to be carefully constructed in such a way that it increases your website's position in the SERP, and it is attractive enough to encourage a surfer to click on your link.

Similar to writing your site content; write your Title tag for your audience first and the search engines second

• Have your keywords in the Title tag: Including the keywords in the Title tag increases the relevance of your web page, when someone searches the web with that keyword.
• Keep the Title tag short and readable: Search engines don't prefer long Title tags. In fact, Google prefers short Title tags. Because some search engines display Title tags in the search engine result pages, make them informative.
• Use different Title tags for different web pages in your site: Never give the same Title tag for all the web pages. The Title tag of a web page must be relevant for that page.
• Don't include your company name in the Title tag unless you think it will attract more users. Instead of your company name, you can consider a suitable keyword.
• Never keep the Title tag empty and never use irrelevant words in the Title tag.

Pay attention to writing your title tag. Don't ignore them, they are a powerful tool and must be used to their fullest advantage. The Title tag helps the search engines decide the theme of the web page being crawled for indexing. When a search for keywords is conducted, the Title tag is given heavy consideration by all search engine algorithms. Also remember, each page in your website is unique and needs a different Title tag. Place the most important keyword phrase for that specific page in the Title tag, and the page will get a certain boost in the search engines. Yahoo and MSN Search are especially influenced by keyword-rich Title tags. Look after your Title tags and they will look after your site traffic.