By Nick Hunter:
When many sites are designed, they are created with a look and feel while not taking into account the proper way to structure a site or pages for real organic search engine optimization. Even if the designer, webmaster or even owner is aware of the importance of proper SEO structure – many leave it for a later time. This includes the page titles.
My initial draft was too long so I am breaking this into 2 parts. Part 2 of HTML and titles will be posted soon after.
Title Types
The word "title" on websites can mean different things. The following are examples:
Html or browser - what is in your source code and what is usually displayed in bold on search results Header - Your visible TITLE on your home page or side pages Navigation Bar Link Names - What people click on and the name you give them. META Tags - This is also in your source code and will describe what your page is about and you can also enter keywords.
All of these are important to do correctly and proper for SEO reasons. However, the most misunderstood and neglected title by web owners and even website designers is proper optimized HTML PAGE TITLES. It is the first thing I look at when I am approached by a customer to optimize their website. I even see bad html tags and titles when someone tells me "I used an SEO Company already".
This post is on Tips and Examples for writing great page titles and how to write page tags for search engines. - I hope you find this helpful.
Ok, so your site may be set up in a dynamic way (images, flash, video etc.) where adding images optimizing content may not be as easy as it looks. The navigation could be set up where the links and page titles cannot be changed easily. There is also the time and lost revenue based on not having the site set up correctly. Thankfully, most websites are flexible and can be changed so they are better optimized and one of the most important changes you can make is fixing and improving your titles.
More on Page Title Types
As I mentioned, If I had to name the first thing I look for when a client or potential customer asks me to analyze their website, it is the poor title structure. When websites have weak titles, they are really giving the rest of their website little chance to succeed through natural search listings. Keywords, links and other search engine and marketing techniques will not work to it’s fullest potential towards strong organic search ranking if the website has poor titles.
The first is the html or browser title and is the real basis for this piece you are reading. This is the page title in the html code itself. It is the title you see when you put a term, word or phrase into a search engine. The summary title in the search engine results (usually in blue) is the html title. It is also the words you see in the top of your browser when you are on a website. It is not visual on the site copy itself. The browser title is meant to tell the search engines what the page on your site is about.
It helps summarize for the search engines. It is incredibly misused by web owners and web designers. I have personally looked at websites that used a “Search Engine Marketing and Optimization Company” (whatever that means most of the time) and the html titles were barely inputted. I have literally seen websites on the Internet that have “home page” as their home page html title or even worse – “Page 1”! Yes – “Page 1”, “Page 2”. It’s ridiculous. Yet – they all go crazy writing 50 word and phrase meta tags….
Meta Tags
Meta Tags are fairly controversial and very imprecise, if you ask me. I honestly have sites and pages that rank great that do not have one meta tag on them. Google has put less and less emphasis on meta tags over the years as far as ranking is concerned. Google and search engines do not make their ranking algorithms and methods public but in my opinion, they look at meta tags when there is little else to go on or read within the site. This means the titles, content and structure of the page is giving them very little to read, so they will default somewhat to the meta tags. I can’t prove their ranking methods but I can say with almost 100% certainty that no website (with everything else being equal) with only clever meta tags will ever beat a well optimized site with good well crafted content and page titles.
Page Header
The next type of title is the header. This is the (normally) larger font or large image word that fronts a page and appears on the website. An example would be if you were to visit a “contact us” kind of page link for a landscaping company perhaps. On that page you might see in bold “Contact Bob’s Landscaping Service”. That bold title is the header title. Usually it is in larger font or with an H1, H2, H3 size tag. H1 is the largest and tells Google, Yahoo, Bing or other search engines that this is an important keyword phrase for this page and helps SEO. It is an important bridge to do properly in Search Engine Optimization between the html title and the actual content on the page. The header further emphasizes what the page is about. It should compliment the browser title, but not copy it exactly.
Proper Link Titles
The third type is internal link titles. This is largely your navigation bar or however you display your links. Many people who design or own their own websites underestimate or are simply not aware of the importance in proper link structure and titling. An optimized site will put the links in text form (not an image) while phrasing them as terms that could benefit the SEO of the page and site. The link name matters search engine wise and it is also important to the inter-page linking within the site.
A common mistake people make when they are creating page titles for their website is they waste connecting words and conjunctions. This is especially true with browser html titles and in Meta Tags. I’ll see home page html titles like this: “Bob’s Plumbing Service”. This really doesn't do much for you unless someone literally types in the name of your company. or I'll see "Bob's Plumbing service, the most reliable and with 25 years experience". There's a lot wrong with this. More of a slogan or catchphrase than a targeted title with Keywords.
HTML Titles are meant for Search Engines more than for people
You want to create great SEO tags and phrases for the pages to help the search engine see that is a high relevant website and page to fit what someone is searching for. That is a lot to what having a high ranking is all about. Google is looking for the most relevant websites, along with popularity and other aspects in their ranking analysis - to show the web user (searcher).
What are Html Titles?
The html browser title is the title or words you see when you are searching on Google or other search engines. The results that appear will have a summary title that is a link. It’s usually in blue and it is what you would click when you want to visit that site from the search results page. It is also the phrase or groups of words you see at the top of your windows browser when you are actually on the site itself.
If you view the source code of a website (the actual script language in notepad), you will see tags like this
Formatting and Writing Strategy
Creating well crafted html tags simply make the above process easier for Google to rank you and bring out the most in the page. You rarely - if ever see a page ranked first with an html title that says “Page 1” or “My Website” or anything like that - no matter how good the actual content is on the site. Yes, the page and site can still have a decent ranking - but normally it does not. And how many less people will click on it if THAT is what you saw in bold on the search results? Let’s put it this way: Any ranking a website or page can get with bad page titles will have a better ranking with a stronger page title. I would say that is a 100% fact.
A good title is not as important to a web searcher. Once a person is on the website, they can see for themselves where they are and what the page has. As long as there are good internal links and navigation, the user will know where they are. Header (bold visible titles) are more important as you do want to tell the user where they are but the html code is all for Google.
Keywords Use and Examples
Regardless of the type of company that you are, the keywords and key phrases should be the basis for crafting your html browser titles. They need to fit with the specific page.
An example could be a Used Car Dealership that wants to get traffic to it’s website. A competitive industry for sure, but if we set up some focus of the company and the actual page to write a title for, it can be successful with the right strategy.
Let’s take a sample company, location and business model.
Norfolk Jeep and Truck Dealership - All Jeep Models serving the Pittsburgh area.
The home page browser title should be geographic and make/model specific. The Auto industry is very competitive on the Internet - along with hundreds of other industries. This is why most web businesses need to optimize to specifics or they will get lost.
The home page for the Jeep dealership above could be:
“Norfolk Jeep Dealer - Norfolk Va Car Truck Dealership, Used New Jeeps”
Some key areas of focus are hit with that html title. Norfolk is mentioned twice, State abbrev, Jeep twice, Dealership, Dealer, New, Used, Car and Truck are all big keywords and they are all in the title. There are also phrases separated by dashes and commas. “Norfolk Jeep Dealer”, “Used New Jeeps” is good too.
The Header in the above example
The Header should be a large font or bold title on the top of every web page. For the home page of Norfolk Jeep and Truck, we could put:
Welcome To Norfolk Jeep (sometimes it's not ALL about SEO - You need to be reader friendly - especially on the page)
SEO Tip
The first few sentences should use the html title keywords and other keywords to introduce the site to the user and Google. Specific Jeep Model types should be mentioned as well.
Note: I'm changing the city example around on this post so people don't land on here when they are actually looking for a Norfolk area Jeep dealer :)
Perhaps: “New Haven Jeep is a full service car and truck dealer specializing in used and new Jeep models including Wrangler, Grand Cherokee and Commander.“
I would also create different description pages for each model that the dealership specializes in. The Jeep Wrangler Page could be a page by itself or since that make and model will still be very tough to rank high as is - the owner of this site or a website like this should consider putting in the year and perhaps even the color or anything else that could help it stand out and compete better for high ranking.
It’s also good to know or remember that the more specific you get relating to your product or service will produce a better and more qualified website visitor when they enter your website.
To be more clear on the above point - if someone just types in “Jeep” or “Jeep Wrangler”, not only are those terms more difficult to compete for, but the visitor may not be as qualified (as in ready to buy) vs. if they typed in “White 2009 Jeep Wrangler”. So not only is that term easier to optimize for, the person coming to the site put in more buying keywords as their search.
HTML Title for Jeep Wrangler Page
Assuming we wanted to create a separate page for this model and make.
“Jeep Wrangler Dealer - Pittsburgh Jeep Dealership, Used Wrangler Truck”
That is all for part 1 of HTML PAGE TITLES - Part 2 will be up soon with MUCH more....
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Nick Hunter
H Internet International
aitbroker at gmail dot com
http://nicksseoworld.blogspot.com/
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