How Can You Spot An Optimized Site? Start With The Title Tags.
Many people approach me with a simple question: “is my site optimized?”
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I am always willing to take a peek at a site to see if it has been designed in such a way that it will attract search engines.
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There are many things I inspect in the site, but the most important, by far is the site’s use of the Title Tag. Let me tell you where to look and what to look for in a well-optimized Title Tag.
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What is the Title Tag? The Title Tag is one of the first pieces of code the search engines read on a page. True to its name, the tag should provide a title for the page.
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Where can you see the Title Tag? When you are viewing a web page, you can see the Title Tag at the very top of the browser window, usually in the blue part.
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The Title Tag begins with “Meridian Natural…”
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Why is the Title Tag important? The search engines place a great deal of importance on the Title Tag. One of the best ways to illustrate this is to show where the search engines use the information from the Title Tag.
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An example of a search result on Google. The Title Tag becomes the headline of the search result.
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What should I be looking for in a Title Tag? You should look at the Title Tags on all, or most, of your pages. If the page is not utilizing Title Tags at all, you will see the URL (http://www.yoursite.com,) the name of the browser (Mozilla Firefox,) or nothing at all. In some cases, the Title Tag will say “untitled document” if it is not being used.
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Unoptimized Title Tag - just has the name of the browser.
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If you see any of the above, the Title Tag is not being used well and the website is almost certainly not optimized. Look for the following things in Title Tags:
- Make sure they are being used.
- Title Tags should be about 10-20 words long. It is a great place to include key word combinations.
- Title Tags should be different on each page. Repeating the same Title Tags on all the pages is a waste of optimization potential.
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Tip: Many of my clients like to include their phone number early in each Title Tag because it guarantees that the phone number will appear in the headline of the search engine results. This can be great for the searcher who needs your number. After all, it seems that most people are heading to the search engines before the yellow pages these days.
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Thanks for your support and keep checking out the Title Tags.
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Gail Simmons said:
Rob, thank you so much for including me in this email. I truly want to take your course but.. I just started this business venture idea last August… and I am literally in the hole right now. Thank You for the input I will go and check immediately.
Kaya Singer said:
This is a really good informative article. My pages do have title tags thanks to Aaron who built it originally. After reading your article I am wondering if I should have more words. Can you give an example of a really good title tag for a home page. Thanks. Kaya
Rob Patton said:
Thanks, Kaya. Although there are numerous studies that show title tags can handle a high volume of words, I suggest that you assign four key word combinations to each page and put these in the title tag, along with some basic repeated information. The repeated information could be your business name, your business location and your phone number, if you want it on the title tag. So…an example for this site might be: Enter The Net Portland Oregon 971 570 8063 Search Engine Optimization Portland Oregon Internet Marketing Website Design Portland Oregon SEO Courses. You may also want to visit the website that I used as an example: http://www.meridian-nd.com Thanks!
Ron said:
Thanks Rob,
I know you covered this in the course last year but when I checked I really needed an update. Thanks!
website design courses said:
website design courses…
awesome topic, I look forward to the next one.. Jason…