With everyone talking about SEO as if it’s solely about link building, I thought it was time to remind you of one of the unsung heroes of getting traffic to your site.
The Title Tag
Putting your keywords in your title tag is perhaps the biggest bang for effort you will ever get with your website. Not only does it give a noticeable impact to your rankings, but a well crafted title can also increase the clicks you get from your rankings. While most new sites will likely only see minor gains up or down from a title change, if you have an established site, finding a title tag which can overlap for multiple terms can have an amazing impact!
Of particular note, it seems that the placement of your keywords (ie. closer to the beginning of the title) will determine how effective it is; a good example of a change you could make is instead of having your title read Site Name - Keyword, do a little switch and have it read Keyword - Site Name.
Another point worth considering is that many times people will link to your content using your title.
As great as they can be, however, you should be careful not to overdo it - mix up the keywords you use on each page, and perhaps take a look at a major newspaper and try to model your own title tags after the descriptive headings they use. Not everyone agrees with me on this one, but if you’re not particularly skilled at placing phrases in your content, it’s easy to get caught for over-optimizing your site - so the old strategy of simply using your keyword as the title may cause more trouble than it’s worth.
One of the best examples of a well-crafted title tag I have ever seen is:
professional search engine marketing services
Why?
Well, it allows you to overlap key phrases; using a title tag like this you can rank for “search engine marketing services”, “professional search engine marking”, “search engine marketing” etc., yet it’s descriptive and tells a search engine what your page is about while still being readable for people who find your page listed in the SERPS.
How can you craft a title tag like this? Well, it’s easier then it sounds - just start up a basic program like good keywords, or do a free word tracker search and look at what terms come up. Then sit down with a pencil and some paper, and try to put the various terms you want to target into a single readable sentence.
