What Is a Title Tag?
A title tag is essentially an HTML code snippet that creates
the words that appear in the top bar of your Web browser --
for example, "XYZ Company Home Page." These words
were entered into the title tag of the site's HTML code. They
don't appear anywhere on the actual Web page. The HTML code
for a title tag looks like this:
<HEAD>
<TITLE>XYZ Company Home Page</TITLE>
</HEAD>
The title tag is usually the first element in the <HEAD>
section, followed by meta description and meta keyword tags.
(You can get more information on metatags in the glossary.)
Some Web site creation tools automatically generate the title
tag from information you provide. You may have noticed Web
pages that are labeled "Page 1," "Page 2,"
or "Home Page" in the browser bar. Labels like these
are used by beginning Web site designers who simply don't
know how to use title tags for maximum benefit.
Search Engines and Title Tags
All search engines use title tags to gather information about
your Web site. The word(s) in the title tag will appear in
the hyperlink listings on the search engine results page;
people click the hyperlink to go to your site. Arguably, your
title tag is second in importance only to the actual text
on the page in determining your site's ranking with the search
engines.
So far as placement of your title tags is concerned, most
search engine experts agree that it probably doesn't matter
if the title tag is the first element in the <HEAD>
section. However, I believe that good coding practice argues
for placing it first.
What Not to Put in Your Title Tag
More important than the placement of the title tag are the
words you put in the tag and the order in which those words
appear. Many site owners mistakenly believe they should put
their company names in this tag. This is only a good idea
if you are a well-known company that people will be searching
for by name, such as Coca-Cola or McDonalds. Otherwise, you
should assume that most potential customers will be searching
for specific products or services, not a particular company
name. For example, if your company is named "Johnson
and Smith Inc." and you are a tax accountant in Texas,
putting only "Johnson and Smith Inc." in your title
tag will probably be fruitless. If you absolutely insist on
including your company name in the title tag, put it at the
end of the tag, after the more important keyword information.
(A number of search engine gurus believe that some search
engines give more weight to words that appear first in the
title tag.)
Title Tags Should Be Specific Keywords and Phrases
As the tax accountant in Texas, you would want your company's
site to appear in the search engine results for searches on
keywords such as "Texas tax accountants" and "CPAs
in Texas." You would need to be even more specific if
you prefer to work for people only in the Dallas area. In
that case, use keywords such as "Dallas tax accountants"
in your site's title tags. This is a key point: If you're
seeking customers or clients only in a specific geographical
region, your keywords need to reflect that geographical specificity.
People looking for a tax accountant in Dallas may begin their
search by simply entering "tax accountant" in the
search engine. However, once they see that their search is
returning accountants from all over the world, they'll narrow
the search by adding "Dallas" to their search terms.
When they do, you want your site to be right there on the
first page of new results.
In our Dallas accountants example, you could create a title
tag that says <TITLE>Dallas tax accountants</TITLE>
or you could say <TITLE>Dallas CPAs</TITLE>. However,
there's more than enough space in the title tag to include
both of these important keyword phrases. (In fact, search
engines will display 60 to 115 characters of your title tag.)
Here's an example of a better approach:
<TITLE>DALLAS tax accountants dallas CPAs</TITLE>
You'll notice that I used the word "Dallas" twice
and also placed it in ALL CAPS once. Most search engines are
not case sensitive, but AltaVista and HotBot are. This means
that your site may well rank higher on those search engines
in response to a query that is entered in ALL CAPS. (Studies
have shown that most people use all lowercase letters when
they type their search engine queries; however, enough use
ALL CAPS to make this worth the effort.)
An interesting note: Several years ago I noticed that in
some engines, pages with keywords in ALL CAPS sometimes ranked
higher than pages with all lowercase keywords. This occurred
even with the noncase-specific engines. Although this was
not a scientific study, I'd love to hear from any readers
who may have observed the same phenomenon.
As for placing the word "Dallas" twice in the title
tag, I have found this approach to be both permissible and
effective. Just make sure that you don't put the same words
right next to each other. For example, a tag that reads "Accountants
in Dallas – Dallas CPAs" is very likely to trigger a
red flag with the search engines, so that the word could get
ignored entirely. It's also not a good idea to use a word
more than twice or to repeat more than one or two words total
in the title tag. However, if you keep these caveats in mind,
I strongly urge you to repeat one or two keywords in your
title tags. In fact, I think it's a must!
Use Only Keywords and Phrases that Are in the Text on Your
Page
If you're not sure what to put in your title tag, take a look
at the text within the page itself. If you've done a good
job with your writing, you should find all the keywords you
need right there on your page. Simply choose the most relevant
ones for the title tag. If you can't find any good keywords
on your page, it's time for a rewrite.
The optimal approach when creating a Web site is to think
of all the keywords that best reflect your business, and then
compose text around those words. When you go to write your
title tag, you simply revisit the keyword list, make sure
the keywords are being used on the page, and poof, you have
a good, keyword-rich title tag.
But remember: If the words don't appear somewhere in the
text of your page, they shouldn't be in your title tag.
Using our tax accounting firm example, suppose you look at
the text on your page and notice that the phrase "Texas
tax accountant" doesn't appear anywhere on the page.
Does this mean you shouldn't use this phrase in the title
tag? Well, yes and no. If you're not willing to change the
text on your page, then no, you shouldn't put those words
in your title tag. However, you can also forget about ranking
high for those words! The smart thing to do is to rewrite
the text on your page so that it uses the keywords that are
important to you. This doesn't mean to just stick the words
at the top or bottom of the page. It doesn't mean to hide
them in the background. Nor does it mean to put them in a
tiny font so that no one will notice them. And it doesn't
mean to simply put them in your meta keyword tag. If keywords
are important enough that you want your site to be found under
them in the search engines, they are important enough to be
elegantly incorporated into the body text of your page.
Once you have incorporated important keywords into the text
of your site, all you have to do is take these same phrases
and put them in your title tag. It really is that simple.
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