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What's in a Title Tag

Imagine for a moment that you are designing the web page for GiddleFunk Industries. GiddleFunk is a leading giddler, with great pricing for professional giddling.

So, for a title -- the little string of words at the top of the web browser -- you have

GiddleFunk Industries - Welcome!

Now, along comes Googlebot, who reads your title, and decides, correctly, that this site is probably about GiddleFunk Industries. So, it stores that away in its memory banks, and the next time somebody searches for "GiddleFunk Industries", you pop right to the top.

Do you see the problem yet?

Of course you do. Nobody is going to search for "GiddleFunk Industries". If a customer is looking for a giddler, or giddling, or giddle estimates, they'll type in one of those words. But not the name of the company -- how could they? They don't know the name yet!

So you re-work your title.

GiddleFunk Industries | Giddle Services

Already, Googlebot knows that in addition to being a site about GiddleFunk, this is also going to have some content on "giddle services". Now the website will be ranked higher for that keyword phrase.

But you can do even better. Instead of putting the company name first, put the product first.

Giddle Services | GiddleFunk Industries

The above title tag tells Googlebot that first and foremost this site is about giddle services, and additionally about GiddleFunk Industries.

How many keywords can you stuff in your title tag? A dangerous question, my search engine optimizing friend. The answer? Only as many as that page is about. If page 1 is about "giddle services", and page 2 is about "home and business giddling", and page 3 is about "experienced giddlers", then you better disperse those keywords to their appropriate pages. Otherwise Google sees that you claimed to be about "experienced giddlers", but in actuality the current page only talks about "giddle services". This angers Googlebot, and you won't like him when he's angry.

Don't try to trick Googlebot. Just give the most appropriate title to your pages, and your rank will improve dramatically.

Oh, and if you don't know how to write a title tag (I won't ask what you're doing here), it's in the <HEAD> section of your webpage, and is written like this:

<TITLE>Products and services :: Company name</TITLE>