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Search Engine Optimisation Training Course
Lesson No.11 -
Engineering the Title Tag
by Bruce Gow Search Engine Guy Pty Ltd
http://www.searchengine-guy.com.au
Once you got your site structure right, the one piece of
SEO that is the most important when it comes to on-page optimization is without
the shadow of a doubt the Page Title.
Although the Page Title is originally designed to tell
your visitors what your page is all about, in practice, it’s much more to tell
the search engines what your page is all about.
What is a Title Tag?
Do not confuse the Title Tag, and the Page Title or the title in the content.
The Title Tag is the header line of text that is
returned in the search engines result pages:
And on top of your browser window,
while the Page Name Title or Content Title, are only visible on the page itself
and
in <header> tags.
$pagename = 'Australian Search Engine Optimisation';
The Title Tag is a piece of information that tells both your visitors and the
search engines what is the topic of your page.
The information should be enclosed by the <title> and </title> tags within the
<head> tags in the HTML code of your page. The title will look like
this
<title>Search Engine Optimisation - Optimization, SEO,
Search Engine Marketing</title>
Tip* When viewing through Internet Explorer, you can
view the coding behind your web page by selecting "view" in the menu and then
select "Source".
When it comes to SEO, keep in mind that since each title describes a specific
page, they each should be absolutely unique.
Why is it so important to optimize for the Title Tag?
The title tag is well known as the most
important on-page optimization factor.
The search engines primarily identify the content of your page based on the
Title you are using. If your title contains or matches the search query of a
user, then you are much more likely to rank high for that search term.
Not only do you increase your chances of ranking better for that search term,
the search engines have a very neat feature that bold their search query in the
results listed on the result page.
That means, if you have the keyword the person is looking for in your Title,
description, and URL, they all will be bolded, and trust me; this draws even
more attention to your listing!
The purpose of this search engine feature is to help the users recognize if the
page returned is likely to be relevant to their search.
How to optimize your Page Title
I will start with what is considered the good practices for general purpose of
the page title:
• Accurately describe the page content. Don’t write a page title that’s got
nothing to do with what will be on that page.
• Save yourself and your potential visitors from a dreadful “Welcome” or “Home”.
• Each Title Tag must be unique. Your pages are different so must be your
titles. This is how Google differentiate your pages, if they all have the same
title then it’s just one page, and Google will only index one, you really don’t
want that to happen to you and your site.
• Use short but descriptive titles. If your title is more than 70 characters in
length, Google will truncated it and it’s not going to look too good for you.
• Don’t write long and unhelpful titles for the users. Not only your title will
be truncated, no one will benefit from an unhelpful title, the search engines
won’t know what your page is about, the users won’t be interested in visiting
that page, and you won’t benefit either from a SEO point of view.
• Don’t just stuff unneeded keywords there either. Cluttering unneeded keywords
in your page Title works more against you than for you. Abuse of keyword
stuffing is a spammer trademark, you wouldn’t want to be labelled as such.
Ok, now that the great lines are clear for you, let move on to the real SEO
stuff.
Do you remember at the start of this course, you learned how to
group your keywords strategically.
This is a process that should apply for each of your pages, in fact if you can
it’s even better in you can repeat the entire Keyword research process by
targeting your page content only, in the end, you are likely to end up with 3
types of keywords:
• Global niche concept for the post.
• Highly relevant keywords.
• Sub-related keywords.
Don't try to spam!
If I was a newbie, and wanted to spam the search engines to rank for "Keyword
Density" I would might write a page title like:
"Keyword Density, Keyword Density SEO, Google Keyword Density, Keyword Density
Tutorial, Calculate Keyword Density, Optimal Keyword Density, Optimum Keyword
Density, Keyword Density Percentage."
Now don’t laugh! There are many people who are doing this and think they are
smart.
So, can you tell me what’s wrong with this title?
• Obviously it’s way too long, well over the 70 characters limit.
• It’s not very appealing to the human visitors.
•I repeat “keyword density” way too much.
How can we correct this?
The title should contain what is the most important and relevant to your page
content, so I’ll start by looking at my main keywords: “keyword density”,
“keyword density SEO”, and “Google keyword density”.
Obviously, “keyword density” is repeated in each of those keywords, so I don’t
need to mention it by itself in the title as it will be automatically optimized
for through any of the other main keywords.
We are now left with “keyword density seo” and “google keyword density”; again I
feel that there’s too much repetition here, so I’m going to blend them into one
sentence:
“Google Keyword Density SEO”
Not the greatest copyrighting, but it:
• still makes sense
• is highly related to my content
• is optimized for my 3 main keywords
Now, with only 26 characters in use, and considering I have more keywords for
this page,
let’s make good use of the remaining characters space.
Just like I did with my main keywords, I’ll try to concatenate the remaining
ones into a sentence.
Based on the keyword difficulty analysis, I’m pretty
sure that if I add “Keyword Density Tutorial” in my page title, I’ll get a top
ranking or at least a first page ranking.
Obviously I can’t have “Optimal Keyword Density” and “Optimum Keyword Density”
together in the page title, so I’ll go with the one with the most searches:
“Optimal Keyword Density”
So let’s see what kind of sentence I could come up with:
“Calculate Optimal Keyword Density Percentage Tutorial”
Actually that’s quite good, although “calculate keyword density” is split, the
proximity is still close so it’s still highly relevant, and the same goes for
“keyword density tutorial”.
So let’s put my Page Title together:
“Google Keyword Density SEO – Calculate Optimal Keyword Density Percentage
Tutorial”
That’s looking pretty sharp, except for the fact that I’m in excess of character
use…“Calculate Keyword Density” has one of the lowest search volume so I’m going to
remove it.
My title now looks like this:
“Google Keyword Density SEO – Optimal Keyword Density Percentage Tutorial”
I still can see that I have one word too many here… I have to choose between
“Percentage” and “Tutorial”.
Though choice, “keyword density percentage” has much more search volume than
“keyword density tutorial”; however “keyword density tutorial” is childs play to
optimize for.
Here’s my decision:
“Google Keyword Density SEO – Optimal Keyword Density Tutorial”
Since it’s a new page, I need traffic and ranking quick,
this is what I can get for sure by optimizing for the easiest keywords.
Later on, once my authority is established through increased off-page
optimization, I’ll be able to change my page title to:
“Google Keyword Density SEO – Optimal Keyword Density Percentage”
At that time, I still should maintain my rank #1 for “keyword density tutorial”,
yet now being able to increase my optimization power for “keyword density
percentage” too.
Exercise
Make sure that each of the page titles for your new site are highly optimized the
way I just showed you.
That step alone will dramatically affect your search engine ranking because we
follow 3 simple on-page optimization rules:
1. Keyword density: our keywords are present, but not overwhelming (no
over-optimization here).
2. Keyword proximity: our main keywords are surrounded by closely related keywords.
3. Keyword prominence: our main keywords appear first and at the top of the page,
to be read by the search engines at the first instance.
1. Learn How
to Sort Out the Competition
2. Do
Your Keyword Research Homework
3. Refining
Your Keywords
4.
Evaluating Ranking Difficulty
5.
Mapping Your Site Structure
6.
Understanding Links & PageRank
7. Sculpting Your Site Structure
8. Cascading Style Sheet
Design
9. Using Wordpress
for SEO
10.
Setting up Your Analytics
11.
Engineering the Title Tag
12.
Optimising The Content
13.
Optimising The Description Tag
14.
Building Internal Links
15.
SEO & Images
16.
OnPage Analysis Using IBP
17.
Link Building 101
18.
Beating Your Competition
19.
Building External Links
20.
Using Structured SEO
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