The <Title> Attribute and your Keywords

This is the title bar from the top of my web browsers' window. The text comes from the page's <title> HTML tag found in the header section of the page's HTML and it plays an important part in getting the best from your keywords. Though most users never notice it, the content of that title bar is important to Google because it uses the <Title> tag as part of its algorithm, making the <Title> an important and easy target for search engine optimization. (See "Britney Spears", "Sex" and "SEO" and Google Rankings: Seven Things You Need To Know ).

There is no definite right or wrong way to use the <Title> other than to make sure every single page contains one or more keywords.

If your major keyword (see The Ideal Amount of Keywords )is part of your URL then a simple strategy is to have all pages using the name of the web site. E.g Widget Shop. This ensures that every page on your site has at least a small amount of search engine optimization connecting it to your major keyword. This can helpful in picking up long-tail searches.

The second approach is to make the <Title> relevant to the page being displayed. This means on your home page it would be your major keyword ( “Widget Shop” ) and your medium keywords are used on category pages (“Acme Widget”). Good SEO practice says that the page's content's main heading should contain the page's minor keyword e.g. “Where to get left handed widget” ( see SEO, Keywords and Headings ) . This heading can then be used in the <Title>, something that is very easy to do in blogging tools like Wordpress.

The final approach is to combine the first and second strategies. This works well if your web site name doesn't contain your major keyword. You can set the <Title> tags on all your pages to use the major keyword and appended the page's content's title to it. On your home page it would be “Widget”, on category pages “Widget - Acme Widget” and on the other pages it would be “Widget - Where to get left handed widget”.

One trap to avoid is having too many occurrences of your keyword in the title. Google assess the number of times a keyword appears relative to the amount of text around it. In “Widget Shop - Home for your widget needs”, the keyword Widget appears twice in seven words. Whereas “Widget - Acme Widget” it is twice in three words. Cramming keywords in to the <Title> tag or indeed anywhere on a web site is an old spamming practice and Google will mark your site down if you cross the line between optimization and spam.