SEO
Title Tags
Title Tags
What is a title tag?
The title tag is an html generated code, which describes a particular pages content through a search query which users normally type in search engines and appears on the top of a browser window or search results. Title tags are very important to search engines as they tell them about the content of a particular web page and are considered as one of the top three seo factors responsible for ranking a website. Easy to understand and content related title tags help search engines to rank your website on the top. Moreover, the categorization of a particular page also depends extremely on its title tag.
How to view your title tag?
There are two ways to view a title tag of a web page:
- In the source code of the web page
- At the top of the browser window
While viewing in the source code of the web page, initially you have to open the source code and then look out for the below mentioned code:
<html>
<head>
<title>This is your title tag</title>
<meta name=description content=
..>
<meta name=keywords content=
..>
</head>
What should a title tag contain?
It is very important to understand that what should be there in your title tag as the weightage of that particular page depends very much upon its title tag. Furthermore, key keywords relevant to a particular page should be used in the title tag to rank higher in search engines. For example, if you have a product and services page then the keyword like business products and services should be used in your title tag. Therefore, it is very important to use major keywords relevant to your pages content in the title tag of that page.
In addition, one can promote its company name by using it as a keyword in the title tag of the major website pages.
What should be a length of a title tag?
Once you realized the importance of a title tag, next step is to realize the length of a tag. It is very important to know the exact length of a title tag as we do not want to spam our website by following wrong optimization practices that can punish our site as well. In general, a title should contain about fifty to seventy characters, but it should not exceed beyond 70 characters as per the best practice.
If your page is about several products and services then it should not be the case to mention all of them in the title tag. Instead, mention the key keywords in the title and rest mention the important keywords on the title tag of the dedicated pages of those products and services. If you try to mention all the keywords in title tag, it will be considered as a keyword stuffing which comes under black hat seo technique and your website can be penalized for that and may harm brand reputation.
Best Practices
- Always take care of the length of the title i.e. 70 characters to the maximum.
- Try to place the important keywords in the beginning of the title which gives them more importance. (As per SEOmozs experience)
- If the brand is not a known brand, try to place the brand keyword at the end of the title tag.