Importance of a Page Title Choice
The title of a page as it is entered in the meta tag in the source code of your web page merits your most thoughtful consideration. Regardless of whether you own a professionally designed mini-site or a slowly developed, mature authority site, the title for each page needs to be carefully decided upon for several important reasons.
Search Engine Optimization: If we look back to the early days of the short history of the Web, search engines seemed to look first to the self-identified keywords of a web page to determine its topic. However, foolish webmasters abused their trust and started spamming the keyword tag area. As the search algorithms became more sophisticated, the title tag became the most important of all the meta data. Thus, in comtemporary times the title tag is one of the major determining factors in a search engine’s determination of the content topic of a web page. This issue is important enough that many businesses decide to outsource the function of expert keyword research specialists.
Top of Browser I.D.: The word or words used in the title tag show up in the uppermost area of the browser window. Although some web visitors do not even notice the word or words used in the title, other visitors rely upon that as a short-hand reference to quickly identify the topic of that page.
Lead In To Search Listings: At the top of any individual listing in a search engine query is the page title, taken directly from the title tag. That is what is hyperlinked to take anyone who clicks it to your page, which of course is your goal. It is blue and underlined so that it is the most noticeable part of your coveted listing.
Bookmark Text: Although any visitor can elect to change the text or even add tags in some browsers, the title tag provides the default text for any bookmark that the user enters into the browser.
Here are a few tips to help you as you decide upon appropriate titles for each of your pages
1. Choose a title for your page that is simply your primary keyword If you consider it important to do so, you may include multiple keywords or phrases in the title, however you should rank order those, putting the most important keywords first and separating each keyphrase with a space, punctuation such as a dash followed by another space.
2. Be certain the chosen title stands out to everyone who has searched for your relevant keyword when your listing makes an appearance in the search engine’s results.
3. Make certain that the page title is brief by also a complete accurate description of the page. Thus, it will be recognizable and useful to the user who sees it listed among the list of bookmarks in her or his browser.
4. Don’t use the word “home” as your complete title of your home page. Unless the page is about the concept of home or a house, calling a page “home” provides no useful information to the search robots or to your site’s visitors knowledge of what your site or this page is really about. However you can use the word as part of a larger title in a descriptive way, such as “Home to the World’s Cheapest Plumber.”
5. You should occasionally experiment with changing your title tag to test if you achieve improved search engine results, in the same way that you would run tests on all of the major variables on your website.
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