Pay attention to the title tags of your web pages. They are
more important than most web authors realize. Once you
understand why the title is so important, you can easily write
more effective title tags.

What is the title tag?

In your HTML code, the page title should be placed between the
beginning and closing HEAD tags, ideally just after the
beginning HEAD tag and before the first META tag.

Why is the title tag important?

The title tag is important for a variety of purposes.

- Most browsers display your page with the title at the top of
the browser window.

- If someone bookmarks your page in their browser, their
bookmark list will show your page using your page title. So if
the title of your web page is "Home Page", as many are, your
visitors' bookmark lists will contain a lot of "Home Page"
listings. How will they determine which "Home Page" is yours two
months from now?

- Google and other search engines present the results of a
search by displaying page titles as links in the first line of
each query result. Search engines doesn't like to display "Home
Page" as the best they can do for a user searching for "purple
people eaters," for example.

- Most search engines will order the results of a search engine
query based on the relevancy of your page to the keywords used
for the query. One of the factors in determining this relevancy
is how closely your title matches these keywords. If your small
startup company makes purple people eaters, don't give your home
page the title "Unknown Business, Inc." It's not relevant to the
search. Of course, many people will consider "CNN" or "Time,
Inc." as relevant for the keyword "news." When you get to be
well known, you can use your name as your title.

You can see that the title of your web page is highly visible
to others, and it can impact the search engine ranking of your
web page. It is therefore worthwhile to spend some time
carefully writing each page title.

Practial tips for writing title tags

Here are some practical tips you can use for crafting an
effective web page title.

- Start by thinking hard about how your potential visitors will
search for your site. What keywords or keyword phrases will they
use for a search engine query? Use one or two of the most
important keyword phrases for your title. In our example, the
home page title could be "Purple People Eaters."

- Don't just use the same title for all your web site pages.
Your About page title could be "About Unknown Business, Inc.,
your Source for Purple People Eaters." Your Order page title
could be "How to Order Purple People Eaters."

- Don't include your company name in the title unless it is a
commonly recognized name or the page is about your company. Use
the limited real estate in a title for relevant keywords. You
can include your company name in the description META tag of
your web page.

- Make sure the title does not exceed 66 characters. Google
will not display more than 66 characters of a title in the
search results page. Truncated titles irritate search engine
users.

- Don't use more than 7-10 words in your title.

If you understand what the title tag is, why it is important,
and follow these practical tips for writing your web page
titles, your internet visibility will be improved, you will
improve your search engine ranking, and you will get more
visitors to your web site.

Copyright ? 2005 by Kempton Smith, All rights reserved.

About the author:

Kempton Smith is a web specialist who helps internet businesses
increase their site exposure and gain more visitors. He operates
the Ad Buddies banner exchange network.
Visit http://adbuddies.com