Ten tips to titivate your title tags

Is it time to tidy up your title tags? By doing so, you can increase click-throughs to your website and ensure a professional look to your search engine listings.

by Helen Leggatt

A title tag is a simple piece of HTML that provides search engines with information about the content of your webpage. Of all meta data it’s probably the most important and the first that search engines will “see", yet often the most overlooked by marketers.

The most common mistakes marketers make are to overload their title tags with irrelevant keywords and to use title tags as welcome messages. Title tags such as “Welcome to my web site” or "Homepage" give search engines little or nothing to rank a site on.

To help you titivate your title tags, here are 10 top tips:

1. Use different keywords on each page of a website. Only use those keywords that appear on the page as this will add punch to your title tags.

2. A title tag is not the place for welcome messages.

3. Keep title tags to within 50 – 80 characters, search engines only search so far through title tags.

4. Include the website name in the title tag, but position it at the end as the words towards the start of your title tag are generally considered more significant than those that follow.

5. Consider using a divider to define a brand and give it stand-out, for instance, “Tips for Title Tags | BizReport.com ”. Remember, your title tag is what browsers see as their tab label, make it recognizable.

6. Think like a searcher and use words and phrases they would use to search for your webpage.

7. Maximize local search rankings by including location/town information in the title tag.

8. Keep calls to action, such as “call now” or “click here” out of title tags, they contribute nothing to search engine rankings and give browsers no inkling of the site content. An exception might be for a special offer page, but note that these title tags can be difficult to manage when promotions come to an end because search engines can take a while to re-index.

9. Dynamic pages require special solutions when it comes to title tags. A programmer can custom build a fix, however many off-the-shelf solutions are increasingly providing solutions as a plug-in.

10. Whenever a webpage’s content is revised make it part of the procedure to double check that the title tags are still relevant.

In a nutshell, title tags need to be carefully developed in such a way that it optimizes your position on SERPs, while being eye-catching and relevant enough to encourage searchers to click on your link.