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
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http://nicksseoworld.blogspot.com/
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