Writing Titillating Title Tags
| posted by Jeffrey OlchovyI shouldn't have to say this, but I'm going to.
Title tags are extremely important when determining a page's position in the search engine results pages!
Again, I repeat, in bold face:
Title tags are exremely important when determining a page's position in the search engine results pages!
Ok. With great attention and care should you craft the title of your Web documents. They carry huge semantic meaning as they are a component of the page's meta-data - that is, the information about the page itself.
With this being said, the title tag is the first place you want your targeted keyword appearing and as close to the beginning as possible at that.
A good heuristic to follow is keeping the length of the title to about 65 characters or less as that will typically be the cut off size for most major search engines.
But forget the search engines for now. The title of your page is what is going to attract your visitors. Well, this and anchor text, but how often do your get to control outside sources' anchor text?
So, when you craft your title, design it with tabloid-like headlines in mind. Grab the reader's attention. Go check out the front-page of Digg and scan for titles that begin with "[Company Name here] - Our News." I'll save you the time. You won't find garbage like that on the front-page.
Again, engage the reader and use your targeted keyword.
For more about crafting good titles, check out the original entry I wrote "From Title Tags to Traffic: Trapping Topical Web Visits."
