A well-written title tag is one of the most important on-page factors to optimize for your website. This is what shows in the top bar of your browser. It defines what the page is about.
A title tag is limited to 60-115 characters so use this space sparingly.
A title tag looks like this in HTML code:
<TITLE>Acme Pest Control Services</TITLE>
The order of keywords you use in your title tag is of vital importance. Swapping keywords around could mean a difference of several positions in the SERPs. Choose the most important keywords that best describe your webpage first.
If you had a moving business for example, you’d want to have something like “(Business name) Moving and Relocation Services”.
Be specific with your keywords whenever possible. If you target specific geographic locations like San Francisco then specify it in the title tag. This helps you rank well for people searching with those keywords included.
So instead of just an all encompassing title tag that could make it more difficult to rank for, you use “(Business name) Moving and Relocation Services – San Francisco”. If your business name is not very well known, you can use “San Francisco Moving and Relocation Services” instead.
You’ll want to avoid placing more than two occurrences of a keyword in your title tag. Doing so may appear to be spammy to search engines.
Dashes and commas are treated as white space so be aware of where your keywords are being placed and don’t place them next to each other separated by a comma or dash. Otherwise they could be discounted by the search engines.
Text in your title tag should contain your most important keywords. If you don’t know what those keywords are, open a Wordtracker account here and start researching. Alternatively, you can use free tools like Good Keywords or Digital Point’s Free Keyword Suggestion Tool. These keywords should also be visible in your copy of that page where you are placing the title tag for. If not, consider rewriting your copy because you’ll earn more brownie points in the search engine for keywords in title tags that reappear in your copy.
These are general guidelines. Test out your title and see what happens. What may give you a number one ranking for one search engine may be third in another.
The more important factor to work on, however, is obtaining relevant links. We’ll cover this in a later article.