Title Optimization – Day 21

The TITLE Optimization of your website (found within the HEAD) is probably one of the most important aspects of Search Engine Optimization. Especially for placement on Google and Yahoo and should ideally be optimized for a small number of keywords or phrases (honestly one to two keywords is optimal). Keep in mind though that the number of keywords to optimize for should be dependent on your PageRank, the keyword competition (is your keyword home based business? so is a million other people’s). As I’ve said in the past, under optimization tends to be better than over optimizing. I’ve seen it many many times working in the SEO industry.

Structure of a Good Title

So now its time to create a successful keyword orientated title. Let’s go with the theme of bass fishing and create a fictitious title for some keywords in bass fishing.

<TITLE>Bass Fishing</TITLE>

That is the best title you could have for the target keyword ‘Bass Fishing”, really it is. Although if you are completely against only have that as your title and want to add your Domain URL to it or some other text (another keyword for PR6+ pages) set it up like this

<TITLE>Bass Fishing | BassFishing.com</TITLE>

<TITLE>Bass Fishing – BassFishing.com</TITLE>

You can separate keywords or your keyword/domain name by using either | or – , whichever you prefer or looks aesthetically pleasing to you. Keep in mind again that short titles concentrate the benefit to only that specific keyword, hence why I suggest only using the keyword and nothing more if at all possible. Since Search Engines like Google rate the contents of the title as important you ideally want THE most important phrase for that page alone.

There are exceptions to the rule though, if your website has a high Page Rank (6 or more) then you should have no problem optimizing your website for 2 or even 3 keywords per page. Make sure not to overdo it, because what you do now might not show for 2 or 3 months. Which means that it can take you 2 or 3 months to correct the problem you created. If after 4-6 weeks after adding an additional keyword to your title and you didn’t lose any rankings, then its safe to say that adding that extra keyword was no problem.

When you decide to make changes to an already successful page (it already ranks well for a certain keyword) then you are taking a risk obviously. Check your site frequently on the search engines and wait 2 or 3 months to determine what ACTUALLY happened to your rankings as a result of that change. Don’t change things weekly as you won’t be able to track what is really going on. If the recent change results in a major drop seriously consider changing back to your original page format.

Does SEO get in the way of Visitors Needs?

It’s really a battle, but primarily you should focus on your visitors needs. It doesn’t matter what type of SEO you do if your page doesn’t convert or your bounce rate is significant. Make titles and find keywords that are both appealing to the eye yet SEO friendly as well. It doesn’t matter how high you rank if your title isn’t fitting for the visitor.

In conclusion, the TITLE tag is one of the most important aspects of a successful SEO’d website. Make sure that you have great Title Optimization, and you can have some great success online.

[tags]title optimization, seo title optimization, search engine title optimization, how to create seo title[/tags]