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How to make title tags optimized for search engines

Written by: Justin Cook

Article Overview: I often analyze the content, HTML coding and tag structure, and link structure of websites, from the perspective of being optimized for search engines. I provide a report to each client on what they need to or should change, and often that report is much larger than they anticipated! On almost every single report I've delivered to date, the title tags have been in serious need of attention.

How to make title tags optimized for search engines

The good old title tag is one of (if not the) most critical components in website optimization. Using optimized titles can mean the difference between getting a top twenty search ranking, and a top three result. Search engines are very literal, they assume that the title of a page tells you exactly what the page is about. In fact, the title will dictate the page's contents, even before the spider indexes the content!

From my experience, these are the three most common misuses of title tags on the web, and I'll explain each individually:

1. Identical titles
2. Overly branded or descriptive titles
3. Keyword stuffed titles

Identical Titles

This issue boils down to laziness. Web developers often template the header/footer of a site, and only worry about the body content on each individual page. The unfortunate consequence of this is that the title tag usually gets lumped right in there with the other header pieces. The result is that you'll have a site or an entire section of a site - many very different HTML pages - that are all the same thing according to their title tags.

Let's say you ran a company called ABC Sock Corporation. Your company sells a variety of sock types, sizes and colors. However, every single page on the site has the title tag "ABC Sock Corporation". The result is either a) all pages dumped in the supplemental index or b) lower search results, as the pages aren't as relevant to search queries.

The supplemental index is one of the filters by which Google keeps their search results highly relevant. Pages that appear to contain similar or identical content are removed from the default search results. Searchers click the "Repeat search..." link on the very last results page just to see them. This link is probably clicked (or even seen) by less than 1% of all searchers, so the chance of your page receiving search traffic from supplemental results is very minimal.

The second result is lower search results - they're bad. Enough said.

So invest a little bit of time creating a unique title for each page, that describes the contents of the page. Every template and CMS allows this, so do it! But if you'd like guidelines for generating unique titles, the next two mistakes explained will equip you with all you need to know to create highly optimized title tags!

Overly Branded or Descriptive Titles
Many site owners have already taken the time to add unique, descriptive content to each title tag on their website. However, quite often they add in a bit of extra description. For example, ABC Sock Corporation's page offering white tennis socks has the title "The largest online selection of white tennis socks | ABC Sock Corporation". This presents two potential problems:

1. No one searches for "The largest online selection of white tennis socks", they just search for "white tennis socks".
2. Adding the "| ABC Sock Corporation" can result in a lower relevance than just "red pumps" by search engines, and therefore result in slightly lower ranking.

Remember that a title tag is not an ad - its purpose is not to sell. It just needs to match the searcher's query, that's all they want. So, in that case, a title tag of "White tennis socks" would be far more effective, and receive more clicks.

As for the second issue, well, that's a little tougher. Many companies will be adamant about keeping their business name in the titles, for branding purposes. Of course, you can also incorporate the company name into the meta description, and it will still be shown on search results pages. However, in some cases, it's advantageous to keep the company name in the title, because then it gets added to bookmarks and such. So, there's no absolutely definitive answer! I end up using just search-targeted terms for titles on some pages, but on tutorials I add in the company name, as they're more likely to be bookmarked, and they receive a high enough search result anyways. It just requires some thought and testing to find the right balance.

Keyword Stuffed Titles

Sadly, I often find titles that have been stuffed with keywords and phrases. What makes this so sad is that it's often the result of hiring a low quality SEO 'professional' to optimize the site. So, you'll find title tags like: "Red socks, red tennis socks, red tube socks, red shoes, blue socks, etc | ABC Sock Corporation".

So again, no one is going to search on such a ridiculously long search phrase. Your title tag should contain the primary phrase that you're targeting with that page. In fact, it's pretty clear that you're trying to 'cheat' for multiple terms, and Search Engines do their best to keep cheaters from prospering. So, expect low search results with such a title. Simply put - keep them focused, you'll have better results.

Conclusion

Yes, it's time-consuming work to go through your entire site and fix each and every title tag. But it's really only a pain the first time, and it's well worth it! Once you see the results, you'll be obsessed with tweaking. I still have improvements to make on this very site, and will constantly be monitoring my web analytics reports & SERPs to see where I need to tweak a title!

Related Articles
  Use Title Tags to Educate and Stimulate
  Meta Tags and SEO
  Importance of headings
  How Title and Meta Tags are Used for Search Engine Optimization
  Why Are Keywords Important?

Article Tags: abc, body content, colors, critical components, default search results, descriptive titles, google, header footer, html pages, optimization, queries, search engines, search ranking, search traffic, spider indexes, supplemental index, title tag, title tags, unfortunate consequence, web developers



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Re: Meta Tags - [quote="ChrisH":tzc1bohg]I'm just curious what you all think -- - How important do you think meta tags are? If the content is keyword optimized and they are being used correctly (as per Google's current instructions) how important are meta tags?? Chris[/quote:tzc1bohg] Metatags were very important 10 years ago. Now, search engines are smarter... There are 2 very important things on your page: 1/ Page title: make sure to place some keywords in your title (avoid title like "welcome to my website, great information resource". You are wasting prime keyword real estate. 2/ Content. Content. Content. Content. Content. Oh, did I mention content?? Your content as to mention your main keywords several times. 3/ <h> and <b> tags are very important too. They tell search engines you emphasize these keywords.
Blogs in Search Engines - The format for blogs make them very compatible with search engines and Blogger uses a format that Google really likes. My Virtual Book Tour site is set up in a format that Google likes and that certainly helps with search engines. I would assume you have the person's name in the Google Alert and that's what you're looking for. Are you using the name in post titles, the blog title and name? I've also been surprised to find how well the profile details show up in the search engines. Also, are you using his name in your tags for each post? Usually each time I post, I have a Google alert within 2 hours to a day. I haven't started a new blog in a month or so, but it seems like the last ones started showing up within a day or so. That's all I can think of at the moment. Shri
Re: Search Engine Optimization - As an Internet marketing strategy, SEO considers how search engines work, what people search for, the actual search terms typed into search engines and which search engines are preferred by their targeted audience. Optimizing a website may involve editing its content and HTML and associated coding to both increase its relevance to specific keywords and to remove barriers to the indexing activities of search engines.
Re: Thanks Evan - [quote="Christine Sutherland":2tgxxkiz]One thing I learned from this report was that the keyword meta tag is really only useful for the first few terms but basically ignored after that, UNLESS you list terms that are not specifically mentioned on the page. If you do the latter, you can be penalised. That was the case for me, because I had terms which were alternative words or phrases instead of actually used.[/quote:2tgxxkiz] Hi Christine, it is debatable whether meta tags are still important for search engine rankings these days so you are better off optimizing tags such as the title (<title>) and headings (<h1>,<h2>) with your desired keywords as they have more weight in major search engine rankings now when compared to meta tags. You are better off listing 5 very relevant keywords, rather than 15 vaquely relevant keywords in meta tags, assuming the major search engines still use meta tags to rank webpages and always make sure the keywords you are aiming to rank for are listed throughout the webpage. [quote:2tgxxkiz]When I checked yesterday, both listings were on page 2, higher up. I am absolutely rock-solid confident I can get it to upper page 1 and Evan's report has been 100% critical.[/quote:2tgxxkiz] That's excellent, if you can tell me the website address and the keywords you are aiming to rank in page 1 of results for, I will try to provide advice to get you there! Kind regards TheAnonymousMan
Re: Search Engine Engineer Needed! - Hi dtmpower, As GT wrote, you need to be more specific. If you want your website optimized for the search engines, I suggest working slowly and doing it by yourself. There are many ebooks, articles and blogs about this topic, and you will find it very easy to understand and do. If you want people to be able to use your site as search engine you can do ti to, by registering with Google Adsense, and using them. Or, you really need a techie to program you a search engine, and i can't help you with that.


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