Nothing could be simpler than the title
you give to your web pages right? Unfortunately, the vast majority
of the websites I visit these days have absolutely terrible
titles that hurt their online business. The title of your website
is a very important part of getting good rankings on most of
the major search engines. A good title also goes a long way
towards getting your prospects to click on your listings.
If you go to Google right now, and type any search phrase
you want, you get back a listing of web sites that match
the keywords you entered in. If you look closely, you’ll
notice that each search listing’ hyperlink is also
the title of that website. The title you choose needs to
describe to your prospects what your website is all about.
It needs to be able to entice your prospects to click on
your listing over any other listing. If your title is simply
your company name, you are most likely loosing lots of traffic.
You will also find it difficult to rank highly on relevant
keywords to your site.
Here are some things to consider:
1. Make sure you use relevant keywords
Keywords are simply search terms that your web site prospects
will type into a search engine in order to find you. The
keywords you are targeting need to be included in your title.
Your keywords also need to be as close to the beginning of
the title as it makes sense to do. For example, if you were
selling shoes online and you were targeting the keyword “children
shoes”, you could have a title like “Children’s
shoes for hard to fit children.” Notice how the targeted
keywords were at the beginning of the title. Putting your
keywords at the front of your title speaks to keyword prominence.
Prominence refers to the importance of your keyword in the
title. If your main keywords are at the very beginning of
the title, it is said to have a prominence of 100%. If they
are at the very end of the title, they have a prominence
of 0%. As much as possible, you want to have your main keywords
appear towards the beginning of your title.
2. Consider using your main keyword twice in your title
If you are optimizing your site to rank well on Google,
you should also consider finding a way to include your main
keyword twice in the title. The trick is to do this without
making the title sound stupid. One way I do this is to use
the pipe character | between your main keywords. For example,
if I was writing a title for a fishing website and the main
keyword I was targeting was ‘fishing charter’ I
could repeat the keywords this way, “Fishing Charter
| Are you ready for a fishing charter you won’t soon
forget?” This example gets my target keyword at the
beginning and manages to repeat it again without making it
look stupid.
3. Persuade your prospect to click on your link
The link that your prospects will see when they do a search
of your website on a search engine will almost always be
the title of your website. Even if you get to the first page
on a search engine for the keywords you are targeting, you
still need to persuade your prospect to click on your link
over all the others around you. If you title is not persuasive,
or even non-existent, you won’t get the traffic you
expect even if you are number one in the listings. Your title
must be persuasive.
4. Say what you want in 65 characters or less.
Almost all search engines limit the length of the title
that will appear to the search engine surfer. Google for
instance, only displays the first 60 to 66 characters. Sometimes,
a webmaster will try to include every one of their keywords
in the title in the hope that all of their keywords will
be picked up by the search engines. Keep your main keyword
prominent in the first 65 characters of your title. Do this
while making sure that your title is properly targeted to
your target market. You can include your secondary keywords
in the body of your web page, but keep them out of the title
unless it makes sense to keep them in. The rule of thumb
for including secondary keywords in your title is to include
them only if you can still keep the title persuasive to your
website prospects.
Your website title is crucial to your success online.
Your title is vital to your efforts of getting traffic online.
Make sure it is descriptive, and persuasive. It needs to
include your main keywords as close to the start of your
title as it makes sense to do. You need to avoid repeating
the same keywords over and over again. This may work for
keywords that have little or no competition on them, but
it won’t work for any keyword that gets even a decent
amount of traffic on them.
| Joe Duchesne is the webmaster for
Yowling.com a company that offers a great online
web site builder that allows the average person
to get their website online in as little as an hour.
Reprint Freely as long as the keyword rich link in
this article is live. |
