Search Engine Optimization: What You Need To Know about Title Tags

By Anthony Kirlew

The TITLE tag is one of the most important tags in your web sites coding with regard to obtaining favorable rankings in the search engines. It is the first thing a search engine (or its robot) will look at to try and determine what the site is about. As such, it is important that the search engine sees “keywords” in this tag related to your sites topic(s). Keep in mind that search engines are basically run by computers so if you tell a search engine what it is looking at, it will often believe you and the TITLE tag is a great place to start talking to the search engines (SE’s).

Make sure you use relevant wording in your TITLE tags, as opposed to just the name of your company. If people know the name of your company they will find you as long as your site is listed in the SE, so it isn’t necessary to put it there, at least not in the foremost position in the tag. If you want to capture would-be customers currently seeking your product or service by searching on words related to your business (and you should want to), you would need to use terms related to your business in the TITLE tag.

The worst thing to do is leaving the defaults from your web editing software in this tag. This is a sure sign of a rookie, and a “pet peeve” of mine. I still continue to see sites that say “Page 1”, “New Page”, Document”, “Home”, and other such default titles in the browsers title bar. If you don’t know anything about search engine marketing, here is a “down and dirty” technique to start with. Simply write out what your company (or your site) does in about in five words or less and place that in the TITLE tag. Paying attention to the TITLE tag is one of the simplest things you can do to improve your web sites ranking in the search engines (provided that it is already indexed in a given search engine).



The TITLE tag has multiple functions. On top of its ability to assist you in gaining favorable search engine rankings, this is where the “title” or name is picked up for your browser. The TITLE tag data is also what is stored when someone saves your site in their favorites, so be wise as to how you use this tag.

Anthony Kirlew is an Internet Marketing Specialist and a life long entrepreneur. Among his diverse business interests, he is the founder of The Web Traffic Team located at http://www.webtrafficteam.com, an Internet Marketing firm committed to helping businesses increase their revenues, both online and offline, through effective Internet Marketing strategies.