Title Tags and SEO
TITLE tags tell a browser what text to display in the browser’s title bar, and they’re very important to search engines. Quite reasonably, search engines figure that the TITLE tags may indicate the page’s title — and therefore, its subject.
Open your site’s home page and then choose View➪Source in your browser to see the page source. A window opens, showing you what the page’s HTML looks like. Here’s what you should see at the top of the page:
<HTML>
<HEAD>
<TITLE>Your title text is here</TITLE>
Here are a few problems you may have with your TITLE tags:
- They’re not there. Many pages simply don’t have TITLE tags. If not, you’re not giving the search engines one of the most important pieces of information about the page’s subject matter.
- They’re in the wrong position. Sometimes you find the TITLE tags, but they’re way down in the page. If they’re too low in the page, search engines may not find them.
- There are two sets. Now and then I see sites that have two sets of title tags on each page; in this case, the search engines will probably read the first and ignore the second.
- They’re there, but they’re poor. The TITLE tags don’t contain the proper keywords.
Your TITLE tags
should be immediately below the <HEAD> tag and should contain useful keywords. Have around 40 to 60 characters between the <TITLE> and </TITLE> tags (including spaces) and, perhaps, repeat the primary keywords once. If you’re working on your Rodent Racing Web site, for example, you might have something like this:
<TITLE>Rodent Racing Info. Rats, Mice, Gerbils, Stoats, all kinds of Rodent Racing</TITLE>
