Search Engine Optimization Basics (Part 2) - Title Tags
by Andy Beal


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 fashioned 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 a 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 the 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>
<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 website's 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.


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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. 
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