The Title Tag: What are you telling your audience?

What happens when you search

For most web users, finding a specific product or service starts with a web search.

In this new digital age, Search Engines provide interested web users with a platform to easily and simply identify prospective target businesses and websites that fit the bill with respect to users’ online needs and desires.

During searches, your business or service is introduced to prospective, interested customers at the top level through the use of title meta tags.

Title tags are a meta tag, or snippets of text/code, that accurately describe what users can expect to encounter on any given web page.

The most popular and necessary meta tags, the title and description meta tags, make up the basis of what an online searcher sees when your company is found among thousands of other online listings. These two variables contribute, to the greatest degree, to how your company webpage is seen and interpreted online.

In popular search engines, the title tag defines the scope of the content on the page that a visitor is about to click on, all in a 70 character or less snippet.

More importantly, the title tag is the greatest contribution for how your business is perceived from the perspective of a first impression.

While commonly overlooked by small website owners, this combination of focus keywords and information about the website page in question does more to shape the impression and feel of a webpage from the perspective of search engines queries more than any other single variable in basic SEO.

So what’s so important about a title tag?

First and most importantly, the title tag is hard for search users to ignore. In major search engines, this variable is the “in-your-face” interpretation of your business.

On search results, the title tag is given weight in both priority and appearance, with title information enlarged and placed at the beginning of every page result.

Simply put, the title tag shapes your interested, prospective customer’s view and opinion of your business before they ever reach your website, helping to define critical factors such as trustworthiness, the accuracy of the topic searched and much more.

Second, the title tag allows small business owners and marketers the opportunity to highlight critical keyword groupings to help give search engines a critical road-map to the content found on any page of your website.

Search Engines visualize the title tag as the billboard for the webpage in question.

This simple variable acts like a headline of your advertisement, coaxing visitors to come to explore what makes you and your business a better choice than the myriad of other search results they encounter in their time online.

Third and no less invaluable, more and more email programs attach “live links” or site previews within email messages that contain links.

These detailed links can show the title, description and url of a link in question and prompt email visitors to click to learn more.

If your business has failed to plan for how your pages are customized with respect to meta values, these “live links” could display incorrect or misleading information to prospective visitors.

So how can I create and customize powerful title tags?

In order to optimize your unique title tags, first you must have access to your website backend.

From there, you can edit title variables by adding or customizing the title meta tag in your web page’s header.

If your website was built with a more dynamic platform, like WordPress, there are a number of powerful SEO plugins that exist to assist small business owners with all aspects of on-page SEO.

Utilizing some of these powerful pieces of software can bring a new reality of powerful self-management for business owners of all shapes and sizes.

Once you have the ability to change your meta variables, the real work begins!

When we create and optimize meta variables for projects, we follow a loose guideline to help us maximize the effects of title optimization on any given web page. This includes:

1. Research

How do you know what keyword variables or combination of keywords are being searched online?

In order to create intelligent, powerful SEO titles, it’s critical to spend some time looking into the results of keyword queries.

This research can range from the most basic to complex, enterprise-level consideration of unique company keyword variables.

In-depth research provides online marketers with the ammunition necessary to create powerful, conversion-enhancing titles that maximize your potential online reach for any page.

There are a variety of tools and programs available online to assist with your research.

2. Craft Titles within the 70 character limit

Major search engines like Google only give websites a maximum of 70 characters in any title variable.

This means that you have to keep your message concise, clear and to the point.

When your titles are longer than the allotted visible space in your listing, your visitors could be left hanging with respect to the contents of your page.

Keeping titles concise allows your message to be consistent across a variety of search platforms.

3. Focus on your Primary Keyword First

What’s the page’s main focus about?

Can you distill it into a couple of words?

Have you confirmed that searches are occurring for that variable?

Utilizing these keywords in the opening section of your title tag tell search engines that those keywords are the most important consideration on the page.

How are you shaping the influence of this message?

4. Utilize secondary or “common” site keywords second in priority

Once you’ve defined your primary keyword for your given page, turn your attention to giving credit and mention to a secondary keyword grouping.

This secondary keyword could be something that backs-up the power of your primary keyword, or it could be a more generic industry-type keyword variable that gives more definition and meaning to the overall purpose of your site.

5. End with your consistent brand message

The final part of your title tag should show consistency for your overall web presence by providing a consistent brand message via your company or trade name.

Where it’s possible, try to produce a consistent message about who this information comes from by giving the final chapter in any page’s unique title tag information about your brand.

6. Tweak, test, repeat

Once you’ve customized your title tags, don’t give up! SEO is a process of constant on-page refinement to better expose your keyword priorities.

Once you have your initial title tags customized, give the search engines a couple of months to reflect your new edits.

After that, test new and different title and keyword strategies manually by tweaking and editing your content to better fit the description of your site’s unique offerings and specializations.

Looking for help with the optimization of your website’s unique title tags?

At Not Fade Away , our internet consultants combine experience and research to help your business formulate powerful meta variables for your business.

Let our team assist with all aspects of your on-page SEO. Contact Not Fade Away today to speak to a representative for more information!