Title tags are the main title that describes your online document and they can be found in the blue bar at the top of your browser, and in the tab headings. They are also what show up as the clickable blue text in a search engines listings.
Title tags help to determine what the relevant subject matter of a particular web page is before visiting it. Search engines such as Google, Bing, Yahoo and Ask use this information to understand what your page is about, and then apply it as part of their algorithms when ranking your web page for a particular set of keywords. Some external websites, such as bookmarking sites, will use your title tag text as the anchor text when linking back to your website from theirs.

Knowing all this information we begin to understand that title tags should be an accurate description of the web pages content, so the people that arrive at your page find what they are looking for and so that search engines understand which keywords you should rank for. So how can you write a title tag for your web page effectively?

  1. Length – Most search engines will truncate your title after approximately 70 characters meaning anything written after this will not be read by internet searchers.
  2. Relevancy – If you have a page about chocolate fudge you don’t want people looking for peanut butter fudge landing on your page otherwise they are likely to hit the back button just as quickly as they arrived.
  3. Keyword Positioning – It is commonly accepted that the closer to the start of your title your keywords are the more important they become to search engines.
  4. Branding – It is important to raise awareness in your brand name and it should be included in your title. With the exception of well known brands, it should be included at the end of your title tag. Well known brands should be placed at the start.
  5. Readability – Consider the readability of your title tag. Titles that form an easy to read sentence are much more likely to gain clicks than those written purely for search engine manipulation.

Which of the examples below would you most likely click on?

Silkstream.net – Website Design | Web Design | Essex | Southend

or

Professional Website Design Southend Essex – Silkstream