Posts tagged title

The webpage title (also known as “Page Titles”) offers many important functions. It’s one of the most overlooked aspect of website design and internet marketing.

Creating a great webpage title is a surefire way to attract precisely qualified visitors to any of your webpages. It’s for this reason I always invest more time on my title tag than any other aspect of my webpage (and suggest you do the same).

Here are my best-kept tips and techniques to create the perfect title tags:

Turn your title tag into a new-visitor magnet - The title tag has always been (and will probably always be) one of the most important factors in gaining high search-engine rankings.

The keyword phrase used in your webpage title draws visitors to your website from search engines.

When the words placed in your page title matches a search query, you have a chance of getting that visitor to your site. No other phrase on your webpage carries this weight. Search engines like Google, Yahoo! and Bing rely heavily on your webpage title to determine the rank of your featured listing in their search results. They reward you with higher rank when the webpage title matches the overall theme of your content.

The actual text you use in your title is one of the most important factors in how search engines decide to rank your web page. And all major web crawlers use the text of your title tag as the text they feature in their SERPs (Search Engine Result’s Pages).

I HIGHLY recommend using popular keyword phrases in your webpage title… especially at the beginning. This is known as prominence. Search engines put more weight in ranking words that show up at the beginning of your title tag.

The most common mistake I see is placing a company name as the title. This is a waste of crucial space as you only have 66 characters to work with (any more are cut off from most search engine results’ listings). Make every character count.

Use call-to-action wording - Just because you rank #1 doesn’t necessarily guarantee clicks to your website. This is a very common problem, and the good news is it’s easy to fix.

Remember, Google (and most other search engines) clone your title tag and display it as a clickable link to your site. What you want to do is encourage these searchers to not only see your link, but to visit your website. You do this by writing additional teaser copy.

For example, this link might get some clicks:

German Chocolate Cake

But I KNOW this link is going to gain a lot of clicks:

German Chocolate Cake – Best Chocolate Recipe You’ve Ever Tasted

Avoid long-tail keywords - You might think twice about using long-tail keyword phrases in your title.

Long-tail keywords (as the name suggests) are search queries that are longer than average… typically 5 or more words.

For example, a long-tail keyword is something like ‘German Chocolate Cake Recipe’ while a short-tail keyword is something like ‘Cake Recipe’.

Spammers typically try to game Google and other search engines by adding long-tail keywords to their webpage title… and this might work against you if you try the same.

My testing shows 4-word keyword phrases seem to be just the perfect length.

The perfect length - Most search engines only display the first 66 characters of the title of your webpage. Suggestion: Keep your web page titles no more than 66 characters so they show up in the SERPs without being truncated.

A waste of precious time - A lot of internet marketing gurus give us bad information about titles for webpages… instead referring to it as the title meta tag. The title meta tag is not the same as your webpage title. In fact in my testing, I find filling out the title meta tag is a complete waste of time. Instead of generating a meta title tag, just focus on a webpage title.

A before Z always wins - The title of your webpage also doubles as the default entry in your visitor’s Favorites when they bookmark your webpage… and most web browsers sort Favorites in alphabetical order — so you might have your first word in your title tag start with the letter “A”.

History - Just like Bookmarks and Favorites, browsers use page titles to label pages in the browser’s web surfing history. Having a descriptive webpage title makes it easier for your visitors to return to your webpage.