Search
Engine Optimization Basics Part 2 - Title Tags
As part
of the continued series "Getting Back To Search Engine Optimization
Basics", Andy Beal turns his attention to the much talked about
Title and Meta Tags (while a Title Tag isn't really a Meta tag the two
are commonly discussed as such). This week he takes a closer look at
the Title tag.
When I
decided a few weeks ago to write a series of articles for those new
to search engine marketing (SEM), I considered whether there truly was
a need to discuss the topic of Meta Tags. After all, this topic has
been so heavily discussed that anyone remotely interested in search
engine marketing would already have grasped this basic of techniques.
My decision was justified just a few days ago when I was asked by the
American Marketing Association to provide a workshop on how to create
Meta Tags and discuss their benefits. It was at this point that I recalled
starting out on my own quest for search engine marketing knowledge many
years ago and researching the basic topics that today seem so fundamental.
So for the next few parts of this series, I hope to enlighten those
of you who are discovering SEM for the first time and maybe refresh
the knowledge of those more seasoned marketers.
Meta Tags
- an analogy
I don't
recall ever reading the following description of Meta Tags anywhere
else (although have been using it for years) so hopefully the following
analogy will be new to you. When considering the function of Meta Tags,
it helps to compare a website to an old fashion book (remember those
paper things that we all used to read before the Internet). The first
part of any Meta Tag is the "Title" tag. The Title tag is
very similar to the title of a book, it gives a visitor the first hint
as to the theme of the website. The next section of any Meta Tag is
the "Description" tag. The Description tag is comparable to
the summary found on the back of a book, providing a brief guide to
the content of your website. The last part of any Meta Tag is the "Keywords"
tag. The Keywords are similar to the index of a book, allowing anyone
to clearly see if the website contains the information they are seeking.
If you compare a search engine to a bricks-and-mortar library, with
millions of books you'll hopefully have a good understanding as to relevance
of Meta Tags for your website.
In this
guide, I wish to focus on what many believe is the most important part
of any Meta Tag, the Title tag. Now before we continue and discuss suggestions
for the best format for your Title tag, lets stop and consider exactly
how it looks in your website's HTML code.
<head>
<title>Title of Your Webpage Here</title> (bolded for emphasis)
<meta name="description" content="Brief description
of the contents of the page">
<meta name="keywords" content="keyword phrases that
describe your webpage">
</head>
As you
can see, the format is pretty straightforward. You will also notice
that your Meta tags should be placed within the "head" area
of your website as opposed to the "body" area.
Ok, now
we have the basic idea of what Title tags are and we've taken a look
at the standard structure, lets turn our attention to ideas for optimizing
the content to ensure a successful search engine marketing campaign.
The Best
Use of a Title Tag
While many
people have differing opinions as to the benefits of the Description
and Keywords tag, most all are in agreement that the Title tag is extremely
important for any SEM campaign. The Title tag is used by pretty much
every search engine that uses spiders to crawl your website. That list
includes Google, AOL, Yahoo, AlltheWeb, AltaVista, ExactSeek.com and
more. The Title tag is pretty much the most effective Meta Tag and is
used for conveying the theme of your Webpage to the search engines.
Not only is the structure and content of the Title tag used by the search
engines when calculating your webpage's relevance, but it is also displayed
in most search engine results pages (SERP). It therefore needs to be
carefully constructed in such a way that it influences your websites
position in the SERP, but is also attractive enough to encourage a surfer
to click on your link.
Long gone
are the days when cramming dozens of words into a Title tag would result
in better search engine positioning. These days the search engines,
Google in particular, prefer to see shorter Title tags that are succinct
in describing the content on the page. In fact, it appears that stuffing
more words into your Title tag will do more harm than good, especially
when targeting very competitive search phrases.
So how
should a good Title tag look? That, my friend, is one of the many questions
that us marketers strive to answer. Each of us have our own ideas of
what constitutes a good Title tag and the format for one page, might
be totally inappropriate for another. However, I understand that to
not provide an example would be a complete omission, so here goes:
<title>Desktop
computers and computer supplies</title> or;
<title>Desktop computers and computer supplies at 123Computers</title>
As you
can see, there are really only two identifiable phrases that make up
the above Title tag, but they provide for many different keyword combinations
such as "desktop computer supplies" or "desktop computer".
Equally important is the fact that they focus on just one theme. Many
times, I'll see websites that will try and target two or more very competitive
keywords that do not follow the same theme e.g. "desktop computers
and digital cameras".
You'll
also notice two different formats depending on whether you wish to include
your company name or not. In an ideal world of search engine marketing,
webpages would not include the company name at all. Unless you're Dell
or IBM, the name of your company really doesn't make much difference
to the user at this stage. They are more interested in knowing the theme
of your page and whether it is relevant to the search query they entered.
Likewise, the Title tag is a valuable thing and adding the name of your
company might reduce the relevancy of your page in the eyes of the search
engines and reduce valuable space that could be used by an extra keyword.
That being said, more than 80% of website owners prefer to see their
company name listed somewhere in the Title tag. If that is the case
for you, it is my advice to place the company name at the end of the
Title tag, allowing the search engine spiders and surfers to read the
keywords first and determine the relevance to the search query before
seeing the name of the company.
In most
cases, less is definitely more when constructing optimized Title tags
for your website. Keeping to fewer keywords will help to demonstrate
to the search engines and their users that the webpage is both highly
relevant and solely focused on a particular product or service. In the
same way, ensuring that each page has its own unique Title tag will
ensure a greater chance your site will be positioned higher on the SERP.
In Summary
In finishing,
I'll leave you with three things you should never do when constructing
your Title tag.
1. Leave
"Untitled" as your Title tag (don't get me started).
2. Use "Homepage" as your Title tag (only slightly better
than "untitled").
3. Use only your company name as your Title tag. Unless your company
name is searched thousands of times each month, add keywords.
The above
advice should keep you busy for the next few days. The next topic in
the series will cover the ideas and formats to use for your Description
tag. We'll go through, step-by-step the purpose of the Description tag
which search engines use it, as well as techniques for getting better
positioning.
Andy Beal is Vice President of Search Marketing for KeywordRanking.com
and ProRanking.com, global leaders in professional search engine marketing.
Highly respected as a source of search engine marketing advice, Andy
has had articles published around the world and is a repeat speaker
at Danny Sullivan's Search Engine Strategies conferences. You can reach
Andy at andy@proranking.com.