Nothing could be simpler than the title
you give to your web pages right? Unfortunately, the vast majority of
the websites I visit these days have absolutely terrible titles that
hurt their online business. The title of your website is a very
important part of getting good rankings on most of the major search
engines. A good title also goes a long way towards getting your
prospects to click on your listings.
If you go to Google right now, and type any search phrase you want, you
get back a listing of web sites that match the keywords you entered in.
If you look closely, you’ll notice that each search listing’ hyperlink
is also the title of that website. The title you choose needs to
describe to your prospects what your website is all about. It needs to
be able to entice your prospects to click on your listing over any other
listing. If your title is simply your company name, you are most likely
loosing lots of traffic. You will also find it difficult to rank highly
on relevant keywords to your site.
Here are some things to consider:
1. Make sure you use relevant keywords
Keywords are simply search terms that your web site prospects will type
into a search engine in order to find you. The keywords you are
targeting need to be included in your title. Your keywords also need to
be as close to the beginning of the title as it makes sense to do. For
example, if you were selling shoes online and you were targeting the
keyword “children shoes”, you could have a title like “Children’s shoes
for hard to fit children.” Notice how the targeted keywords were at the
beginning of the title. Putting your keywords at the front of your title
speaks to keyword prominence. Prominence refers to the importance of
your keyword in the title. If your main keywords are at the very
beginning of the title, it is said to have a prominence of 100%. If they
are at the very end of the title, they have a prominence of 0%. As much
as possible, you want to have your main keywords appear towards the
beginning of your title.
2. Consider using your main keyword twice in your title
If you are optimizing your site to rank well on Google, you should also
consider finding a way to include your main keyword twice in the title.
The trick is to do this without making the title sound stupid. One way I
do this is to use the pipe character | between your main keywords. For
example, if I was writing a title for a fishing website and the main
keyword I was targeting was ‘fishing charter’ I could repeat the
keywords this way, “Fishing Charter | Are you ready for a fishing
charter you won’t soon forget?” This example gets my target keyword at
the beginning and manages to repeat it again without making it look
stupid.
3. Persuade your prospect to click on your link
The link that your prospects will see when they do a search of your
website on a search engine will almost always be the title of your
website. Even if you get to the first page on a search engine for the
keywords you are targeting, you still need to persuade your prospect to
click on your link over all the others around you. If you title is not
persuasive, or even non-existent, you won’t get the traffic you expect
even if you are number one in the listings. Your title must be
persuasive.
4. Say what you want in 65 characters or less.
Almost all search engines limit the length of the title that will appear
to the search engine surfer. Google for instance, only displays the
first 60 to 66 characters. Sometimes, a webmaster will try to include
every one of their keywords in the title in the hope that all of their
keywords will be picked up by the search engines. Keep your main keyword
prominent in the first 65 characters of your title. Do this while making
sure that your title is properly targeted to your target market. You can
include your secondary keywords in the body of your web page, but keep
them out of the title unless it makes sense to keep them in. The rule of
thumb for including secondary keywords in your title is to include them
only if you can still keep the title persuasive to your website
prospects.
Your website title is crucial to your success online.
Your title is vital to your efforts of getting traffic online. Make sure
it is descriptive, and persuasive. It needs to include your main
keywords as close to the start of your title as it makes sense to do.
You need to avoid repeating the same keywords over and over again. This
may work for keywords that have little or no competition on them, but it
won’t work for any keyword that gets even a decent amount of traffic on
them.
This article was written
by Joe Duchesne, president of
http://www.yowling.com/, a budget web
hosting company that specializes in helping online business owners
increase their website traffic. Copyright 2004 Yowling. Reprint Freely.
Article Source:
http://EzineArticles.com/
