Creating a Title Tag for Search Engines
By Derek Vaughan
Ever wonder what is takes to make your website rank more
highly in the top search engines? Have you ever been
frustrated by a search engine neglecting to include your
website in an important business category? Well, if so, read
on.
During my recent work with numerous small and medium-sized
online business clients, I have noticed that many of these
website owners are great at running their business - but
struggle with getting traction at the major search engines.
I have also found a common thread which connects these
businesses - and if corrected - can make a huge difference
in their search engine rankings. That common thread is the
title tag, meta description and meta keywords of their
sites.
In determining what your website is really all about, search
engines typically use two general measures: 1.) who links to
you and what text they are linking with and; 2.) on-page
text particularly focusing on the text at the upper portion
of the page (also often called ''above the fold''). The
title tag, meta description and meta keywords fall under the
category of on-page optimization. In brief, search engines
examine a website's title tag and meta data, and then parse
it to make an educated guess about which search terms are
most relevant for that page's content. Today we'll be
focusing in on the title tag of your website.
Here are the steps to get your website's title tag to be the
best it can be for your particular business:
First off, let's understand what the title tag is and where
you can view it. In the upper left corner of the main bar of
the Internet Explorer(IE) browser (most statistics report
84% of Internet users or higher are using IE) there is some
text on every website you visit. The beginning portion of
this text is usually visible when you minimize a browser
window. This text is displayed from the website's title tag
-and it's vitally important to every commercial website.
The title tag is easy to see in the browser, but it
originates in the underlying code used to design the
website. If you 'right click' on a website with your mouse
you will see a display box with several menu items listed -
if you click on 'View Source' - you will see a text display
of the underlying code for that website.Here are the first
few lines of underlying html code from one of the TechPad
Agency websites:
http://www.thehostingnews.com.<html>
<head>
<title>Dedicated Servers, Reseller Web Hosting News</title>
In the html code, the title tag is proceeded by the <title>
tag and ends with the </title> tag- the text that appears
between these two tags is what will appear in the browser in
the main display bar at the top.
''Okay - I get it!'', you might say. ''So I can put any
message I want in there to sell the goods and services of my
site''. That's true, but remember that the title tag is
important for a much broader reaching reason: search engines
treat your title tag as an indicator of your site's main
purpose, and therefore which categories and search terms to
place it under.
If you want to be found under a specific search term in
search engines, you must include that term in your title
tag. Let me sat that again so that you don't miss the
importance of this:
If you want to be found under a specific search term
in search engines, you must include that term in your title
tag.
So how do you determine which search terms are best
to include in your title tag? There are many great tools
available for free to assist you in creating a compelling
title tag. We'll look at two of those -Google Trends, and
the Yahoo! Search Marketing keyword suggestion tool.
Google Trends is an interesting tool that lets you see the
relative amount of searches conducted at Google for (mostly)
higher volume search terms. You can also compare several
terms at once to see which receives more Google searches.
Google Trends is located here:
http://www.google.com/trends
Let's use for our example a hypothetical website that sells
cellular telephones. Suppose that the website owner has
several ideas about which terms to use in a title tag:
cellular phone
cell phone
nokia phones
cingular phones
mobile phones
So which of these terms is likely to drive the most traffic
if it is well ranked in the Google search engine? Using
Google Trends we can enter each term into the input box -
either individually or using up to four phrases separated by
commas - then observe the graphical results.
The order of this list ranked by search volume according to
GoogleTrends then becomes:
cell phone
mobile phones
nokia phones
cingular phones
cellular phone
I would then suggest using a great tool from Yahoo! Search
Marketing which will help you find other popular search
terms that can help you generate more traffic to your site.
It is located here:
http://www.eovt.com
Begin by typing a search term into the input box. In our
example I typed in our most popular term - cell phone. Below
are the results (shortened considerably to save space).
| Searches Done in
Previous Month |
| Count |
Search Term |
| 4181697 |
cell phone |
| 961060 |
cell phone plan |
| 7547 |
nokia cellular phone |
| 5358 |
samsung cellular phone |
| 4750 |
us cellular phone |
| 4153 |
verizon cellular phone |
| 3809 |
sprint cellular phone |
| 3430 |
lg cellular phone |
| 3177 |
unlocked cellular phone |
| 2868 |
cellular mobile phone wireless |
| 2854 |
cellular phone battery |
| 2754 |
cingular cellular phone |
The data represents actual searches performed in a
previous monthly period through Yahoo! Search Marketing,
'Count' is the number of searches performed and 'Search
Term' is the search phrase the user typed in looking for
products and services online. As you can see, if our cell
phone website were to use the phrases ''cell phone'' and
''cell phone plan'' then the vast majority of searches
related to cell phones would be covered.
In conclusion - the title tag which will attract the most
traffic if the website can achieve high search engine
rankings would be something like, ''Cell Phone and Cell
Phone Plans from ABC Company''. A couple of extra quick
tips:
Keep your title tag relatively short - no more than about 10
words.
Place the most important items up front in the title tag
(this is probably not your company name).
Position Technologies, Inc. was founded in 1995 and
pioneered the first pay-for-inclusion program with
Yahoo/Inktomi, which has grown to become the model for the
Search Industry. Mr. Detlev Johnson, Vice President of
Consulting with Position Technologies stated regarding title
tags,"The importance of writing titles cannot be
understated. Keyword stuffing is a mistake. Branding and
clicks are too important. Search engines credit terms found
in titles that display to users. The optimal length for a
title is shorter than 50 to 60 characters. Longer titles are
cut off in search results, in browser windowpanes, and make
poor bookmarks."
While there are myriad important activities that will result
in great search engine placement, there is no substitute for
a rock solid title tag. Give it some thought, and use the
tools, techniques and suggestions mentioned above, and you
should have a great title tag for your site that helps you
get more website traffic.
Derek Vaughan is the Senior
Editor of
The Hosting News, a
website devoted to bringing web hosting news and information
to website professionals. Mr. Vaughan is a freelance writer
on topics ranging from search engine optimization and
webmaster tips to web hosting and Internet marketing.
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