Writing Correct HTML - Browser Tags and Titles PART 2

The following is PART 2 of how to make proper page titles - html and browser tags. Included in this part will be content suggestions to compliment the titles that are created. This includes Keywords and geographic location placements and Keywords.

Please read PART 1 OF How To write HTML TITLE PAGES first.

---

Sample Company Let’s use a moving company and place their location in New York. It’s a good example for us since I doubt many of you will copycat together and start a moving company! But, anyone who has a website will learn from this exercise and scenario. Ok, so back to our company. They specialize in residential and commercial moving. They also work and service specific area around New York City and the surrounding suburbs. The company name is Tower Movers.

The website for Tower Movers has been laid out with the basics by their designer. It currently has pages for:

Home
Services
Residential
Business
Storage
About Us
Contact Us

All of the pages have proper content depth on the page with keywords. What’s missing are the titles – Browser, Header and Link Titles.

Our job will be to come up with html titles for each page. They will be created in the proper format and target them to the message of the page.

Formatting HTML

A major mistake I see with many websites is they treat the page title like it is a place for a slogan or for just keyword stuffing. That is incorrect.

Slogans and full sentence descriptions should not be used in the browser title. Conjunctions (and, or, but, etc.) should not be used either. The purpose of the html title is to take advantage of search phrases put into Google or other search engine. The title should be blocks of 1-3 word phrases. People do not search “the best tree removal service in New Jersey”. They search “New Jersey Tree Removal” or something like that. So the title should play off of anticipated searches. The browser title is only part of properly optimizing a page and website. So even doing that will only get the page so far without having the other elements in place.

Let’s look at the home page of our example company:

The company name is Tower Movers

HOME PAGE TITLE

Again – this is the html title in the code and not the title or header you would see in color or bolded on the website itself. It is mainly for search engine SEO and does not have exactly match the content, but to compliment it.

We’ll write out a weak title first to compare

Bad Title Example: “Towermovers.com – We provide the best prices and services for new york residential and commercial customers. Our work is guaranteed”

I see titles like this all the time. That is a bad title for several reasons.

One major problem is using the name in a dot.com on the title. That is not necessary and hurtful to the name for search reasons. If someone searches “Tower Movers”, it may not even come up well because it is meshed with a url and not the proper name. The name with the .com is a given if someone searches it. A person searching for a name with the dot com will get the person to the site anyway.

The second problem is the use of conjunctions and connecting terms that clutter potential keywords and keyword phrases. These smaller connecting words are used to create long sentences and slogans. They are not effective and yet I see it all the time because many website designers and webmasters have not learned how to use proper html titling.

The third issue with this home page title is there is wasted space where real keywords aren’t used. There is plenty of room for good targeted words and phrases that are keyword rich. Notice what 2 words are not used in the title – even once? “Moving” “Movers”.

Making a Good Html Title

Choosing keywords

Whether you are researching for an html title, header or just keywords to write copy, using a keyword research tool is helpful. You should start by using the terms you already know for your business and using tools and sites to affirm what you think your keywords are. That is really the best way to do it. You’ll be surprised many times how many phrases are searched in your business - both less and more.

There are also many words that you can use in titles that are higher searched than what you are using. Meaning, I see “residential services” on may sites, when “home” or “house” is searched much more. That’s just an example industry terms or vernacular going against what is searched more.

FREE Keyword Sites and Tools

I like the Google Adwords keyword tool system for searching terms. I used to like the old Overture Pay Per Click for this but since Yahoo bought them, I have found the interface difficult and frustrating. Bing's Microsoft Ads keyword tool and other external free ones are currently out there as well.

With Adwords (you’ll need to create a Pay Per Click Account), you can use the tools section and type in words and phrases. Keep the synonyms option open.

Just get a group of words that you can work with. Then use your best instincts and use the words with the geography or other specific you are targeting and you can check the volume and popularity of those terms. You’ll get good suggestions and ideas from it and maybe even expand your site.

Crafting and Writing Browser Tags

The title we are creating as an example can be used as a guide for you own site. The goal here is to catch search engine queries easier by having the html title predict some of the search phrases and let Google know that this site or this page is one of the most relevant and should rank high for that search.

Very important: The title should not use a keyword more than 2 times (just to be safe) in the html title. We should avoid doing a title like “New York Moving, NYC Moving, Moving Company”

I am going to have 3 sets of keyword phrases and I will have the name of the company in the title, but only because it is the home page. I normally will not waste space on the side page html titles with the company name. I also don’t mind using it here because our sample company name has a keyword as part of it’s name. That’s a bonus!

I also want the title to be reflective of what services my company does and the area it covers. I am not looking to be number 1 for “moving company”. One, that will probably not happen and 2 – I don’t want to try. This is a New York based company. Someone else on the web is a Detroit moving company or Phoenix company. I am not looking to fight national competitors here. I want to beat out the New York area competition.

Many websites (if not most) do market beyond their local market. That is the great thing about the Internet of course. When that is the case, many times I suggest “bottom feeding” or getting more specific to a product or service you offer.

Don’t try to come up first for “greeting cards” but maybe “birthday greeting cards” or even more specific. These should all be used as titles for the pages specific to it.

My overall title and SEO strategy will focus around being high on searches for my service and my area of coverage. My website will have the other supporting aspects in place. Good content, link titles, headers, etc.

I will also use commas and hyphens to separate the phrases. I have found either works well and so I tend to use both.

Ok, so on to a good home page title. A better way to go here would be:

Home Page HTML Title 1

“Tower Movers – New York City Moving Company, NY Home Moving”

There are several other combinations that could work there with a little switching around. The key goal is to get some keywords in (not all as it is only one page). You also want it in the proper format without wasted or overdone words. With a proper header title, good content, interlinking and good navigation structure and this page should perform well.

Sometimes I don’t use the company name in the title at all. I just create keyword rich terms and phrases - even on the home page. But if you want the name of your company in the search results bar, you should put in there somewhere. Not everyone will look at the actual url of the search results to know who you are. I still have sites where I don’t care about the name of my company or name of the site if I can get a better ranking without it.

Home Page Browser Tag 2

So if we leave out the company name, we could try another title.

“New York City Moving Company, NYC Mover - Manhattan NY Moving Service”

That browser title works well here. It does not repeat a keyword more than 2 times or any other word more than 2 times. Now that is not a hard 100% rule. I see results for some types of sites unaffected by being a little more aggressive with a keyword or phrase in an html title. But if you notice, if you go to Google and type in “Mortgage Refinance” , the top results will not have a top site with an html title like: “Mortgage, Mortgage Refi - Mortgage Refinance, Loan Refi, Home Loan Mortgage…”

So I tend to be targeted but not overdo it. If the title is done well with a good header and solid SEO around it, the page will do well.

SEO Content Tip

Make sure you are creating sentences in the home page that have your title phrases and keywords in them. Having a strong keyword rich targeted title is great but if the rest of your site does not reflect the title words, Google will not rank that page as well. Overall this is a good thing imo. The days of websites getting a great ranking by just having a catchy title and some crafty meta tags are over. Google is the best search engine in the world because it’s system for ranking sites creates a better experience for the searcher and that makes the Internet better for everyone.

They want sites that make it easier for them to figure out what they are. That’s why Titles. Links and Content are important. But they also look at relevancy and making sure you are not misleading the user or being overly aggressive with keywords and titles.

If I can rank well on Google based on their rules, I am better for it because 80% of the Internet’s users search on Google. I tell my clients this all the time. If you can rank well on Yahoo!, MSN and some others - fine, but Google is where we focus. They’re not going anywhere either.

I also like being committed to my businesses and sites enough that new sites can’t just jump me.

So when you make a good home page (or other page title), back up that title with real content.

Whether we use the Title 1 or Title 2, we can create a good sentence example.

"Tower Movers – New York City Moving Company, NY Home Moving” or “New York City Moving Company, NYC Mover - Manhattan NY Moving Service”

SEO Content Sentence Example:

“Tower Movers is a full service New York City moving company providing high quality mover services to residential and business customers in Manhattan and throughout NYC”

That would be a very good opening sentence or somewhere in the first paragraph.

Home Page Header Example

The header (bold visible word or phrase at the top of a web page) should compliment the title we wrote but not copy it.

Header titles that are similar to the above would work. Short, relevant, properly formatted and complimentary to the html title. It also should be a search term or phrase. When someone types in “New York Moving Company”, that header and the html page title that is on the page will definitely brig that search out.

That was a good amount of FREE SEO Tips on titles . More to come based on feedback. Join our FREE SEO Mailing list at the corner right form on the blog for a LOT more:

Nick Hunter
H Internet International
aitbroker at gmail dot com
http://nicksseoworld.blogspot.com/
Our SEO FACEBOOK PAGE
My Ezine expert author Profile Page - view various articles I have written on many topics of interest - including website marketing.

Page Titles for SEO - Proper html Web Page Titles (Part 1)

How to write html browser page titles and tags with examples, length and format

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 . That is actually a bad home page title. It is readable on the site though. When the website is created, each page is set up as their own page entity – or at least they should. The website pages that rank well are the ones that match content with proper html browser titles so the search engines can get a clearer picture of what the site is about. It is most important to learn and understand that each page should have it’s own unique html title that is specific to the page itself. It’s best to give an example of a company and optimize some titles so it’s understood easier.

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....

Feel free to comment, sign up for the Nick's SEO World FREE Newsletter or contact me direct for search engine optimization or marketing work.

Nick Hunter
H Internet International
aitbroker at gmail dot com
http://nicksseoworld.blogspot.com/
Our SEO FACEBOOK PAGE
My Ezine expert author Profile Page - view various articles I have written on many topics of interest - including website marketing.