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Title Tags Revisited
By Jill Whalen (c) 2009

What Is a Title Tag?

The title tag has been – and probably will always be – one of
the most important factors in achieving high search engine
rankings.

In fact, fixing just the title tags of your pages can often
generate quick and appreciable differences to your rankings. And
because the words in the title tag are what appear in the
clickable link on the search engine results page (SERP),
changing them may result in more clickthroughs.

Search Engines and Title Tags

Title tags are definitely one of the "big three" as far as the
algorithmic weight given to them by search engines; they are
equally as important as your visible text copy and the links
pointing to your pages – perhaps even more so. Yet, even though
this has been common knowledge among SEO professionals for at
least 10 years, it is often overlooked by webmasters and others
attempting to optimize their websites for targeted search engine
traffic.

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.

This doesn't mean that you should put *just* your company name
in the title tag. Even the best-known brands will benefit from a
few good descriptive phrases added, because they will enhance
your brand as well as your search engine traffic. The people who
already know your company and seek it out by name will be able
to find you in the engines, and so will those who have never
heard of you but seek the products or services you sell.

Title Tags Should Contain Specific Keyword Phrases

For example, if your company is "Johnson and Smith Inc.," a
tax accounting firm in Texas, you would want your company's
site to appear in the search engine results for searches on
phrases such as "Texas tax accountants" and "CPAs in Texas."
(Be sure to do your keyword research to find the best phrases!)
If you prefer to work with people only in the Dallas area,
you'd need to be even more specific by adding geographical
modifiers to your title tags, such as "Dallas tax
accountants."

Using our Dallas accountant example, you might create a title
tag like this one:

Johnson and Smith Tax Accountants in Dallas

or you might try:

Johnson and Smith - Dallas CPAs

However, there's more than enough space in the title tag to
include both of these important keyword phrases. I find that
using 10 to 12 words in my title tags works great.

One way to include two keyphrases would be like this:

Johnson and Smith - Dallas Tax Accountants - CPAs in Dallas, TX

I've always liked the method of separating phrases with a
hyphen; however, in today's competitive marketplace, how your
listing appears in the SERPs is a crucial aspect of your SEO
campaign. After all, if you have high search engine rankings but
your targeted buyers aren't clicking through, it won't do you
much good.

The idea is to write compelling titles as opposed to simply
factual ones, when you can. But it also depends on the page, the
type of business, the targeted keyword phrases, and many other
factors. There's nothing wrong with the title tag in my above
example. If you were looking for a tax accountant in Dallas and
saw that listing at Google, you'd probably click it. (Note:
Don't worry if some of your visible title tag info gets cut off
when the search engines display your page's info; they are
still indexing all the words contained within it.)

Still, you could make it a readable sentence like this:

Johnson and Smith are Tax Accountants and CPAs in Dallas, TX

I'm not as thrilled with that one. I had to remove the exact
phrase "Dallas Tax Accountants" because it wouldn't read as
well if it said:

Johnson and Smith are Dallas Tax Accountants and CPAs in Dallas,
TX

It sounds redundant that way, as if it were written only for the
search engines.

In the end, it's really a personal preference.

Don't make yourself crazy trying to create the perfect title
tag, because there's just no such thing. Most likely, either of
my examples would work fine. The best thing to do is to test
different ones and see which bring the most traffic to your
website. You might very well find that the second version
doesn't rank as well, but gets clicked on more, effectively
making up the difference.

Use Your Visible Text Copy as Your Guide

I prefer to create my title tags *after* the copy on the page
has been written and optimized. I need to see how the copywriter
integrated the keyword phrases into the content to know where to
begin. If you've done a good job with your writing (or better
yet, hired a professional SEO copywriter), you should find all
the information you need right there on your page. Simply choose
the most relevant keyword phrases that the copy was based on,
and write a compelling title tag accordingly. If you can't seem
to get a handle on the most important phrases for any given
page, you probably need to rewrite the page content.

I recommend that you *don't* use an exact sentence pulled from
your copy as your title tag. And don't use the exact wording
that's in your top headline. It's much better to have a unique
sentence or a compelling string of words in your title tag.

You'll want to watch out for certain website content management
systems (CMS) and blog software that automatically generate the
title tag from information you provided elsewhere. Some, in
fact, default to the same exact title tag on every page, which
is the best way to kill your search engine leads! The good news
is that most of today's CMS's and blog software have
workarounds so that you can customize your title tags fairly
easily. If yours doesn't, or your developer claims they can't
do this, then you'll want to find a new developer or CMS as
soon as possible!
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Jill Whalen, CEO  of High Rankings and co-founder of SEMNE, has
been performing SEO services (http://www.highrankings.com/seo-services)
since 1995. Jill is the host of the High Rankings Advisor
newsletter (http://www.highrankings.com/newsletter/) and the
High Rankings SEO forum.
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