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Does Your Site Pass the Title Tag Test?

Published 02/12/2009

You know those words in the top bar of the browser when you’re on a website? You may not have noticed them before now, but you’ll want to pay attention to what shows there for your site from now on.

Those words are from the page’s title meta tag, a part of the code that makes up the page. And while the title tag is just one small part of the code, it plays a really big role.  

Title tags are crucial in getting your site indexed and ranked in the search engines. A title tag tells the search engine what your page is about – and it’s also what displays in search results to represent your site.

Let’s take a look at your title tags now. Pull up your site and look at what appears in the very top bar of the browser.

If you’re seeing generic terms like “Untitled Document”, “Welcome to our Home Page”, “About Us” or “Contact Us” as you click through the pages, it’s time for an overhaul. (Known as stop words or dead weight words, these are so common that search engines ignore them or return search results irrelevant to what the person is looking for.)

If you see just the name of your company or services, your title tags will also need help.

Here’s what you need to do to get those all-important title tags working for you…


Sample Title Tags

We’ll show you a couple of examples to give you a boost on your way to great title tags.

If you look at T-mobile.com, you’ll see a title tag something like:

“Cell phones, cellular phone plans, prepaid cell phones, free cell phones & deals”

Not bad. You can tell someone has put thought into which keywords the home page should rank for.

On the other hand, go to Nortel.com, and you’ll see a good example of what not to do:

“Nortel”

Here’s another example from the alpaca niche:

Before: “Alpaca Meadows Homepage”

After: “Wisconsin Alpaca Farm, Northern Wisconsin Alpaca Breeder: Alpaca Meadows”

The first tag is quite generic and will not rank well since most people looking for information on alpacas will not be looking for a specific ranch or breeders name right off the bat.

The second tag on the other hand contains many general AND specific keyword phrases such as “alpaca”, “alpaca farm”, “alpaca breeder” along with keywords related to its location. Not only will this descriptive tag gain more traction in the rankings but it will lure more visitors to the site.

Creating great title tags is a little bit of an art form. Indeed, one of our SEO engineers specializes in this, and if you’re a client, she’s likely had a hand in constructing the hard-hitting meta titles found throughout your site.

Have any questions or want a hand getting your title tags perfected for more powerful search engine performance? Talk to SEO Advantage today.

About SEO Advantage

SEO Advantage, Inc. is an online marketing /search engine optimization firm that helps businesses turn their web presence into a powerful revenue generation medium. Our clients enjoy dominance on Google, Yahoo and Bing through a suite of unique pay-for-performance search engine optimization and online marketing services implemented by a multidisciplinary team of SEO engineers, copywriters, and web designers. You'll find us referenced in books such as Writing Web-Based Advertising Copy to Get the Sale and the BusinessWeek bestseller The New Rules of Marketing & PR, as well as the popular ebook The Small Business Blogging Blueprint. Find out more today. Visit www.seo-advantage.com, call 1-800-366-1639 or email us here.


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