Optimizing Title Tags

How to Fix Your Page Title Element
by Nicolette Beard

Your Title tag is the single most important ranking component on your Web page. A good title tag needs to achieve four goals:

1. Feature the exact phrase for which you want your page to rank.
2. Make that phrase the very first that appears in the Title.
3. Repeat that phrase in some variation.
4. Include the company name for branding and locale (if optimizing for local search).

Just above your browser, you'll see a blue line across the top of your computer screen. How many times have you seen the Title read: Welcome to Joe's Cranes? Or just Welcome.

The point is that search engines will index that Title along with billions of other "welcome" pages, and your customers will never find you if you sell "industrial cranes," for example.

More importantly, your potential customers are searching for "new and used industrial cranes." (You will have conducted thorough keyword research to determine that fact.)

The second mistake is putting your most important keywords in the wrong order. If you want to rank for "Industrial Cranes" don't say South Texas Crane Company. Use the exact phrase you want to rank for. Search engines will pay attention.

Lastly, this Title tag only uses the primary keyword once. But do we know if they're selling birds or machinery?!

Repeating your keywords in your Title tags is extremely important, as long as you don't overdo it. Keyword stuffing is likely to get you penalized. Plus it looks unprofessional to the viewing public.

Branding With Title Tags

There's some debate about whether to place the company name in the Page Title and, if so, what is the optimum word placement? Here's my take on the subject:

If your company is a well known brand, place it first. Visitors will recognize quickly that they've come to the right place, and you'll enjoy higher click-through rates.

If you run a business that only your customers know about, place it at the end of the Page Title. Even if you exceed the 10-12 maximum word count or (63 character limit), search engines will still index the entire Page Title.

Often visitors perform what's called "navigational search" where they simply type in the company name into a search box rather than type in a URL in their browser.

This way you'll be certain to grab returning prospects who know about you but don't remember your exact domain name.

The Well-Optimized Page Title

Here's the change to the original Page Title that will result in improved rankings for the search: "Industrial Cranes."

Industrial Cranes | New-Used Cranes | Crane Parts-Supplies | Joe's Cranes Houston

The exact phrase "Industrial Cranes" appears first in the title and "Cranes" is repeated twice later. The repetitions vary slightly in word order and are presented as both plural and singular nouns.

Since search engines do not read separators, like a hyphen or vertical bar, this Page Title is optimized for several search phrases including local search:

• Industrial Crane
• New Cranes
• Used Cranes
• Crane Parts
• Crane Supplies
• Joe's Cranes
• Crane's Houston

Ideally, the Web site should feature one page of focused content for each product and service category.

Making these simple changes will almost always have a positive lift on your search rankings and traffic. Most top SEOs tweak their Title tags to get that extra bit of mileage out of them. You should be too.