SEO By Me » wordpress tip http://seobyme.com Ultimate, Practical & Comprehensive Search Engine Optimization Mon, 11 Apr 2011 06:35:56 +0000 en hourly 1 First Thing First: The Title Tag On Your Website http://seobyme.com/45/first-thing-first-the-title-tag-on-your-website/ http://seobyme.com/45/first-thing-first-the-title-tag-on-your-website/#comments Mon, 15 Feb 2010 20:00:21 +0000 Denis Kristanda http://seobyme.com/?p=45 Whatever kind of website you have – blog, e-commerce, review site, mini site, landing page, profile page, etc -  one of the important things you need to look after is the TITLE TAG for each of the web page as this become the “label” or your site. -ksr_trseobm-

The Gist of TITLE TAG

The purpose of this TITLE TAG has 2 folds:

  1. To summarize the content of the page while attracting user to click the link.
  2. To be the main item to be indexed by search engine.

To set your webpage title, you just need to put it between <title> and </title> on top of your page. Typically, the title tag should be your 4th line of the code, after DOCTYPE, HTML and HEAD. For example:

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN"
   "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd">
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">
<head profile="http://gmpg.org/xfn/11">
<title>3 Keys SEO Principle: Absolute Must To Know | SEO By Me</title>

There are 3 prominent places where this title will be displayed as key label, in order of importance:

  1. On the SERP (Search Engine Result Page): This is the most important aspect of SEO effort. You will want the search engine to index your page according to what you want.
    [SERP]

    Search Engine Result Page

  2. On Bookmarks (Online and Offline): I am not talking only about the bookmark for each browser (try press Ctrl-D to bookmark this page), but also the social bookmarking site such as del.icio.us, digg, Reddit, Sphinn, Mixx, Twitter, etc. When a user want to share or save on any of those site, by default, whatever you put between those title tag will be used as your main display/entry.
  3. On the top of your browser windows and tab: This display is the least of our worry as it is being displayed on user’s browser after it is loaded. Well, the user already click and display the full page on his/her browser, so, the very purpose of this title tag has been accomplished.
    [Title on Internet Browser]

    Title on Internet Browser

What’s Next

So, having known the above, some importants aspect below need to be considered seriously to achieve the maximum of your SEO effort:

  1. The title tag need to be different for each web page as it has to represent the content.
    So, if you have static website (html), you need to edit each of the page and customized the title tag accordingly. If you have dynamic page, make sure the title page is generated dynamically as well – do not just put your website or blog name between the title tag.

    WordPress Tip: Do not muck around with the title tag, simply just put below line on your header.php or whereever your theme produce the header:

    <title><?php wp_title(‘ ‘); ?></title>

    and then install All-In-One SEO pack to take care the rest. Even the default setting of this plugin will give you the most of title tag’s SEO.
    .

  2. Incorporate keyword(s) in the title.
    Forget all the fancy title, it is important to incorporate whatever you want to emphasize and ranked high on the search engine. For example: if you have article about the latest gossip of Brad Pitt and Angeline Jolie, do not just write the title tag as “Stop Press! They Did It Again !” which is does not mean much. But try like “Brad Pitt Makes Angeline Jolie Mad: Yesterday News?” which incorporate 3 important phrase “Brad Pitt”, Angelina Jolie” and “News” – Yes, you can write anything at all on the actual title on the article, but pay a little bit more attention for the Title Tag.
    .
  3. It’s Premium Space: Make it Short and Prioritize.
    Remember, Google (and others too) will only display the first 65 characters on the SERP. So, incorporate some keywords, but do not stuff it with too much keywords that make the title very lengthy. 65 characters should be enough. Just prioritize.
    Anything above 65 characters will be truncated and an ellipsis (“…“) is being displayed instead on Google’s.
    .
  4. Incorporate your brand,  if possible.
    On the example above, I put “| SEObyme” at the end of the title tag. This is call branding. Imagine if you see the SERP above, just a glance you will know which article is from your website. But remember that keywords has more priority than branding. So put your brand at the end of the title, so if you need to have extra keyword and the titles goes beyond 65 characters
    .
  5. Support the title tag with headline
    Your title tag does not have to be exactly the same with your headline (<h1>, <h2>, <h3>…), but maintain at least partial aspect of the title tag into the headlines. Not only for the search engine to confirm the content consistency/relevancy, but also to manage your reader expectation when they click your title tag.
    .
  6. Use normal capitalization.
    Do not use all capitals letter on the title tag. This will alert the search engine robot that your site might be a SPAM site as that what Spam website usually do (using all capital letters, or all lower case letter). Not only that, it will become an eyesore for your user as more and more people is now aware that capital letter is a SCREAMING method. If people scream at you, will you visit them ? Not likely…
    .

OK, now… check and fix all of your title tag !

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