Guest Article: All About Title Tags
By Jill Whalen of High
Rankings.com
The Title Tag is one of the most important factors in
achieving high search engine rankings.
In
another article I talked about the basics of search
engine optimization. Now it's time get down to the
meat! In this article we'll drill into one of the most
important factors in achieving high search engine
rankings, the title tag.
What Is a Title
Tag? A title tag
is essentially an HTML code snippet that creates the
words that appear in the top bar of your Web browser,
for example, "XYZ Company Home Page." These words
were entered into the title tag of the site's HTML code.
They don't appear anywhere on the visible page.
The HTML code for a title tag looks like this: < HEAD
>
< TITLE > XYZ Company Home Page < /TITLE >
< /HEAD >
The title tag is usually the first element in the < HEAD
> section, followed by
meta description and
meta keywords tags. Some Web site creation
tools automatically generate the title tag from
information you provide. You may have noticed Web
pages that are labeled "Page 1," "Page 2," or "Home
Page" in the browser bar. Labels like these are used by
beginning Web site designers who simply don't know
how to use title tags for maximum benefit.
All search engines use title tags to
gather information about your Web site. The word(s) in
the title tag will appear in the hyperlink listings on the
search engine results page; people click the hyperlink
to go to your site. Arguably, your title tag is second in
importance only to the actual text on the page in
determining your site's ranking with the search engines.
So far as placement of your title tags is concerned,
most search engine experts agree that it probably
doesn't matter if the title tag is the first element in the
< HEAD > section. However, I believe that good coding
practice argues for placing it first.
More important than the placement of the title tag are
the words you put in the tag, and the order in which
those words appear. Many site owners mistakenly
believe they should put their company names in this
tag. This is only a good idea if you are a well-known
company that people will be searching for by name,
such as Coca-Cola or McDonalds. Otherwise, you
should assume that most potential customers will be
searching for specific products or services, not a
particular company name.
For
example, if your company is named "Johnson and Smith
Inc." and you are a tax accountant in Texas, putting
only "Johnson and Smith Inc." in your title tag will
probably be fruitless. If you absolutely insist on
including your company name in the title tag, put it at
the end of the tag, after the more important keyword
information. (A number of search engine gurus believe
that some search engines give more weight to words
that appear first in the title tag.)
As
the Texas tax accountant, you would want your
company's site to appear in the search engine results
for searches on keywords such as "Texas tax
accountants" and "CPAs in Texas." You would need to
be even more specific if you prefer to work for people
only in the Dallas area.
Continued....
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Dear Readers,
I can hardly believe our newsletter is one year old
already! But here we are, and I'm proud to say our
subscriber list is growing fast. A big thank you to
every single one of our readers - your feedback and
support helped us achieve this milestone and we could
not have gotten here without you.
Like the new look Search Light? I
thought we'd celebrate our first year anniversary by
launching a full color HTML version and a guest article
from my friend Jill (The Web Whiz) Whalen of
HighRankings.com. But it's not just the layout of the
newsletter that's different. You'll notice the format of
the newsletter has also changed.
Because of the sheer quantity and regularity of search
engine news that comes across my desk each day, I
decided that a monthly newsletter can no longer keep
up. So I've moved it to an online
WebLog format (that's "Blog" in techie talk),
which is updated every couple of days on our web site.
You'll still receive the Search Light
newsletter (in its shiny new HTML outfit), but now
you'll receive it every couple of weeks and it will
contain only a summary of each news item, with links
to the full story on our Blog pages. This will enable us
to provide you with more stories, more often.
Of course if your thirst for search
engine news can't be quenched, simply visit our
Search Engine Blog daily for the latest industry
news and goss.
Till next time - happy reading,
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