Unique Page Titles include Keywords

recast — Tue, 21 Jul 2009 20:55:07 +0000

Use unique title tags for each page of website. This is one of the most productive and easiest SEO features to build into your pages.

The title tag appears in the header section of HTML code, near the top of the page. Search engines give it considerable weight, so create your page titles carefully.

Officially (from World Wide Web Consortium http://www.w3.org):
“Authors should use the TITLE element to identify the contents of a document. Since users often consult documents out of context, authors should provide context-rich titles. Thus, instead of a title such as “Introduction”, which doesn’t provide much contextual background, authors should supply a title such as ‘Introduction to Medieval Bee-Keeping’ instead.”

Brief explanation of page content
Page titles display at top of the visitor’s browser and should represent an abbreviated description of that particular page’s contents. A title such as “Home” or “About Us” tells nothing about the content of a page, so it is useless to readers and search engine robots. No “Welcome to my website” or other superfluous headings, please! Proper titles should be under 64 characters in length, so 5-7 words is a good guideline. Include the most relevant keywords or keyphrases.

Avoid using “filler” words (the, your, home) since they take up valuable characters from a limited supply. Avoid strings of keywords that appear more like “keyword stuffing” than a complete thought (“Web design – hosting – SEO – internet marketing”) Your organization name should be part of your home page title if possible. Here is how the title appears in page code:

    XYZ Shoe Company sells shoes and boots

Providing each page with a unique title and it’s own keywords enables visitors to find pages other than your home page when doing searches. For example, the following are titles of 2 pages at Attraction Web Design. If someone is searching for “search engine optimization”, they may find my (more appropriate) SEO page before my home page.
[Home] Website Designer – Hosting – SEO by Attraction Web Design of Delaware
[SEO] Website search engine optimization – SEO and keywords

Your page title will appear in the following places:
• Browser window title bar, and when printed, at the top of the page
• As title for web page listing on the search engine results. This helps to guide interested parties to your site.
• Default entry in favorites (bookmarks) and history lists. This helps repeat traffic come back to the correct site.

Location of your office or customer base
If you serve a particular population, your location is a keyword too! Notice that my home page title (above) includes “Delaware”. Web surfers realize that they have to limit their search to a geographical area if they are looking for someone local to work with, so adding your state, city or town will rank you higher in those cases.

Target your customer location

For the home page, I include my complete business name in case someone is aware of the name but not the web address. The other words will give me a better chance of a high result for various combinations of searches, such as “web designer in Delaware”, “Delaware website”, “website design and hosting”, etc.

My business serves the entire USA, although most people find me by including “Delaware” in their search. Especially if you only service a particular area, it is critical to include that state, city, county or locality on your home page and other important pages (both text and title).

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Unique Page Titles include Keywords