I’ve been talking about the Title Tag a lot lately. It is one of the most important elements in good SEO and yet probably the most overlooked by new developers. Just this week I reviewed several sites sent to me by people who read my book. I was surprised to find that every single one of them needed to fix their title tag!
I can’t go another SEO Sunday without dedicating an entire post to the Title Tag – it really is just that important. Now rather than me rambling on and on about how great the title tag is I thought I’d share five other resources online so you can get a balanced view and see what a big deal a good title is!
All About Title Tags (HighRankings.com)
Best Practices for Title Tags (SEOMoz.org)
Title Tag SEO Tips (SEO.com)
If you’re just too lazy to read any of these – here’s the three things you should always remember about title tags:
- Use the keywords you want to rank well for in your title tag
- Avoid going-over 65 characters – Google will find you spammy
- Put your company name in the title tag
Now go back through all the sites you’ve build, heck – even your parked sites, and fix your titles! You’ll be surprised by what a big difference something so small can make.
Related posts:
{ 6 comments… read them below or add one }
Do you really think changing the title tag would help parked pages? I was under the impression Google pretty much pushed them to the bottom of the pile.
@Leonard with services like WhyPark and Smartnames it absolutely helps – both of those services can actually rank. While you won’t rank as well as a completely custom-build site, good title tags will help you rank as well as possible.
This only applies to parking services like SmartName and WhyPark that let you add your own unique content.
what’s the rationale for putting your company name in the title tag? unless it contains your keywords, it seems like a waste of your 65 characters
Very important indeed. I also agree with Mike that your title should be as minimal as possible.
There’s no need to have anything appended to the actual title… this is just extra fluff that a search user did not specifically search for but has to read. Remove it and you may receive higher rankings and click-through ratio.
“what’s the rationale for putting your company name in the title tag?”
Well Mike, if you read the article in the first link Morgan gave us you may very well see a good reason to include your Company name in the title.
Excerpt from Jill Whalen’s “High Rankings” article:
“Do Company Names Belong in the Title Tag?
The answer is a resounding YES! I’ve found that it’s fine to place your company name in the title, and (gasp!) even to place it at the beginning of the tag! In fact, if your company is already a well-known brand, I’d say it’s essential. Even if you’re not a well-known brand yet, chances are you’d like to be, right? The title tag gives you a great opportunity to further this cause.”
Read more: http://www.highrankings.com/allabouttitles
Seo is my main headacke , but some tips like this post will help.
Thanks!