Use Keywords In Page Titles

The title of your article or web page is much more important than many of us realize. The actual text you use in the title tag is one of the most important determinates in how a search engine decides to rank your web page. Also important, all major web crawlers will use the text of your title tag as the text they use for the title of your page in your listings.

I recommend you use your main keywords in your page title itself. This title tag is different from a Meta tag, but it needs to be considered in relation to them. Whatever text you place in the title tag (between the portions) will appear in the title bar of browsers when they view the web page. Some browsers also append whatever you put in the title tag by adding their own name, as for example Microsoft's Internet Explorer or OPERA. So many web pages have no proper title, so when you try to save them, you have to type in your own words for that page. This is very sloppy, and reduces credibility in my eyes.

If you have designed your website as a series of websites or linked pages, you must assure that each page of your website is search engine optimized. The title of each page i.e. the keywords you use on that page and the phrases you use in the content will draw traffic to your site.

The unique combination of these words and phrases in the content of your web page, will draw customers using different search engine terms, so be sure you capture all the keywords and phrases you need for each product, service or information page. Of course you mustn't overload your title with too many keywords, two at most is acceptable.

The most common mistake made by small business owners when they first design their website is to place their business name or firm name in every title of every page. Actually most of your prospective customers do not bother to know the name of your firm until after they have looked at your site and decided it is worth book marking. Search engines read your web page the same way you do at the start. The title comes first, so why mess it up with your company name.

So, while you want your business name in the title of the home page, it is probably a waste of valuable keywords and space to put it in the title line of every page on your site. Why not consider putting keywords in the title so that your page will display closer to the top of the search engine listing.

Dedicating first three positions for keywords in title avoiding the stop words like 'and', 'at' and the like is crucial in search engine optimization.

So there you have my rationale for proper use of keywords in titles. Is it important? Well to me there is nothing more critical than the opening phase of how the search engines will analyze you.

Fred Farah