Virtua Software Blog

The Basics of Search Engine Optimisation are fairly easy to implement and a few small tweaks and changes to your site can reap big rewards. In this series of articles I’ll show you some simple techniques to help you improve your rankings in Google and turbo charge your results.

The Page Title is absolutely the most important attribute on your page in terms of Search Engine Optimisation and search engines place tremendous weight on them when they are assessing the meaning of your page. Adding Page Titles correctly is probably the easiest way to improve your chances of being found by search engines, and I’m going to show you exactly how to do this.

What is a Page Title?

Before I show you how to create superb Page Titles that will make Google love you and list your page(s) higher up in its results, it’s probably a good idea to give you the lowdown on just what a Page Title is, and what it isn’t.

When I talk about Page Title I’m not talking about the big title at the top of your page (these are known as headings, and are another very important element of Search Engine Optimization). I am in fact, referring to the “title tag” which is a small piece of HTML code within your page. The page title will appear in the bar along the top of your browser window as shown below:

The title of the Virtua Software home page is “Web Design in Southampton: Virtua Software Systems”. Note, the page title in the picture above is not a good example of how page title should be constructed, but more on that later!

Here’s how a page title will look in your HTML code:

The title tag offers you the opportunity to rank for a specific term, and is an opportunity which should not be missed!

You should also be aware that if you have many duplicate title tags within your site Google may put your pages into their Supplemental index, effectively removing any chance of being found by internet users. Here are some vital tips for that perfect title tag:

Actually include a value for your title tag!

“Untitled Document” is often added to Page Titles by default by most WYSIWYG editors like FrontPage and DreamWeaver, if you dont specify a Page Title yourself. If you forget to change it, you are missing out on a golden opportunity rank well for your chosen search term(s).

Have a unique Page Title for every single page on your site

This is your opportunity to get maximum exposure for your site. If all pages on your site have the same Page Title, there is a good chance that they will end up in Google’s supplemental index and will be much more difficult for people to find.

Target as few phrases as possible within your Title Tag

When creating a title for your page, you need to include some keyword phrases that people will be searching for. For example, the Virtua Software homepage title includes the phrase “Web Design” because we want to be found when people search for that term. Dont try to target too many keyword phrases, and certainly dont just list them, as the Search Engines will frown upon this and may even remove your site from their index altogether. Using just a few short keyword phrases is also a reflection of general good practice, as it implies that each of your pages covers only a couple of topics - imagine trying cope with reading a page that jumps from one subject to another!

Separate each phrase with a hyphen “-“ or pipe “|”

Nothing much to add here really!

Only include “keywords”, try not to use words like; the, and, their, etc.

Search Engines will assign weight to each word you use in your title tags based on the total quantity of words in the title. If you use “Stop Words” such as “The”, “And”, “They” etc, you are effectively diluting your Page Title, meaning that less weighting is assigned to the real keywords. Basically, the shorter your Title Tag, the more weight each word will receive. This is very difficult to master, and you need to strike a balance between this and making your titles look natural.

Limit your title tag to a maximum of 63 characters

Google only shows between 63 and 67 characters (including spaces) on their search results, so if your tag is any longer Google will replace the remaining characters with ellipses (…). While this is unlikely to affect your rankings, if people cant see your title tag properly, they might not click on the link to your site as they may not understand what it is about. And hey, thats the ultimate goal of search engine optimisation - to get real people to visit your site.

Don’t include your company name unless it is well known

Ranking for your own brand name should be fairly easy so by including it in every title tag you are simply diluting the “weight” of the other terms in the title. Notice in the example pictures above, we still included our company name? well, not any more!

This also makes sense for another reason: unless you are a large company with significant brand awareness (think Nike, Coca-Cola, Google etc.), not many people will be searching directly for your brand name. It is much more likely that they will be looking for a broad product or service.

Put your main target phrase at the beginning of the title tag

Some Search Engines assign more weight to words at the beginning of your page title, on the assumption that it must be the most important because you mentioned it before anything else. This principle can apply generally for other page elements too, such as Headings and Paragraphs.

Make it read well for humans too.

As mentioned above, the main goal is to get people to click on your link instead of everyone else’s. If the purpose of your site isnt clear from your page title and description, how can you expect people to be enticed into visiting your site?

Make your title relevant and specific. “Welcome to Bob’s Online Store” isn’t a good example of a title. It doesn’t tell visitors what they might be able to buy in Bob’s Store and is totally unfocussed. And let’s be honest, who is going to know (or care) who Bob is, anyway? Ok so Bob might be part of the brand experience and thats fine for returning customers, but its not going to mean anything to new visitors.

A better example would be “Buy Acme Widgets and Accessories from Bob’s”. You could increase the weight of the keywords by removing any reference to Bob, but we’ll assume that Bob is big in internetland and has done some heavy online branding.

Wrapping up

So, there you have it. The current state of play on Page Titles in the Search Engine Optimization. It’s not easy writing good page titles, and there is no such thing as a perfect title so have a look at your site and see if there is any room for improvement. Try putting some of the above into practice and note the results. As always “Test, test, test”.

Good Luck in your SEO efforts! More on SEO very soon…