Optimising the Title tag

The HTML Title tag is one of the most important factors in search engine optimisation, yet it is often overlooked or used incorrectly. A well written Title tag can support search engine rankings and also increase the clickthrough rate from the search results list into a website.

The Title tag should be included in the ‘head’ code section of every website page and remains one of the key elements within the SEO factors on a website and page. There are 2 reasons for this – firstly, because a still plays an important role in keyword targeting, and secondly because the text that’s included in the Title tag also forms the hyperlink from the search engine results page. In addition, this text also appears in the browser bar when a user views the page, although the length of the tag is important in both of these cases as the number of characters being displayed will be limited by Internet Explorer and also by Google within the ranking results.

Websites are often built with little attention to the Title tag, which will simply reflect the page name (such as ‘Home Page’ or ‘About Us’) or will use a generic wording throughout the site (such as ‘Welcome to XYZ Company’). This is really missing a great opportunity to improve the ranking potential of a site, whereby the targeted optimisation of different search terms throughout all pages of the site should be driven by the page content and the focused use of 2 or 3 search phrases in the Title tag.

Once these targeted search phrases are included in the Title tag, they should also be reflected in the description tag and the body content of the page, including headlines where appropriate. This will give the website a better opportunity to rank well for relevant terms in its market, although the tag may need to be adapted and tested in different ways to establish the best possible ranking position that can be achieved at the time.

As noted above, consideration also needs to be given to the way the Title tag will be displayed in the search results, so that it encourages searchers to click on the link into the site and, if important, establishes product or brand awareness as well. Google tends to cut off the Title tag content after 55-65 characters, so it’s worth testing this and seeing how the Title tag displays within Google’s results once the updated page has been indexed.

Some websites may see an immediate impact coming from some basic changes to their Title tags, whereas others will need to work harder on getting this optimisation factor to work well with the rest of the site. If you would like more information about how the Title tag could be used better with your website, please contact us now.

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