With a title owing more to alliteration than optimisation (I didn’t check to see what the search volumes were for this blog post title!), we’re going to look at one of the most important aspects of on-page search engine optimisation (SEO), Title Meta Tags. Using a site to illustrate and (make an example of) can be useful and in the hot seat is handcrafted jewellery shop Dink Design!

First of all, a Title Tag is one of the pieces of meta data that search engines read in order to determine what a web page is about. It can be seen on the top bar of your browser when you’re on a website and it’s also often used by search engines as the title of the snippet they show for a site on a search engine results page (SERP).

So, as it’s visible, it’s very important for humans, and as it’s read by search engines, it’s important for optimising your site. When a page is returned in the SERPS for a given search term or terms, the term is presented in bold on the SERP, the more keywords matching the search term you have in bold, the more likely a searcher is to click on your site.

1. Unique Title Tag

Have a unique Title Tag for each page on your site. It should have the keywords and terms that are relevant for that page, and that you want that page to rank for. If you use Google Webmaster Tools they will show you if you have duplicate title tags and where they are.

With Dink Design the home page title tag looks like:

The Title Tag looks like:

and includes the following key terms:

1. Handcrafted Jewellery
2. Unique Jewellery
3. Fashion Jewellery
4. Dink Design
5. Dublin
6. Ireland

But the title tag on the Bracelets page for example is exactly the same. This would be better if it targeted ‘bracelets’ and relevant terms for that page.

2. Length of Title Tag

Ideally keep it under 70 characters. This is the length shown in SERP snippets. Some sites stuff keywords into the title tag, but it’s not recommended because:

• it can appear a bit spammy and unprofessional for visitors when they see it on the browser title bar
• it can look untidy when  it’s presented as the title on a snippet on a SERP

The Dink Design title tag is 114 chars (including spaces) and will appear shortened on a SERP like:

3. Keyword Placement

Put the most important terms or keywords towards the beginning. You should be already ranking for your site name or brand name (assuming it’s not a common word) and so this can be placed at the end. If you are a big brand that users are likely to prefer and click on, then you might want to put the brand name at the beginning.

For Dink Design, a Google search on “handcrafted jewellery” Ireland shows them in 3rd place (below ads). Not bad. Theres an entry from BrowseIreland.com in 2nd place. Dink Design could also put an entry here with keywords to be targeted in the description.

4. Match Keywords in Content

Keywords in the title tag are not so effective if the keywords do not appear in the content of the page. Even though you’re telling a search engine that this is what your page is about, if it doesn’t find any evidence, it may not rate it much.

Content can be a challenge on ecommerce sites which typically have lists and images of products with little text around them.

On the Dink Design site, the keywords from the Title Tag are not used in the content of the page, except for a repeat of the title tag at the bottom of the page.

5. Keyword Research

Before writing the title tag, do your keyword research to check which are the terms that your target market is actually searching on and target these terms. Also, check the terms that your competitors are targeting and see if there are any others that they’ve left out and that you could target and scoop up the traffic on.

6. Write for Searchers

Think user experience (UX). If search engine traffic is an important channel for you, try to write title tags that users will want to click on – attractive, snappy, compelling, positive.

7.  Dividers

I think it looks better if you use a divider like a pipe (eg. Necklaces | Dink Design ) to separate the keywords from your brandname. This doesn’t make a difference to SEO.

8.  Test

If your traffic is relatively stable, then you can make changes to your title tags and see if the traffic improves and, more importantly, if the traffic is better targeted and conversion increases.

9.  Geo-target terms

If you target different geographical markets, then you may need different spellings in your keywords. For example, it’s jewellery in Ireland, but it might be jewelry in the US. Make sure your terms are relevant for your audience.

10. Use Plugins

For WordPress users there are a variety of plugins you can use to help in the process of filling in a title tag. All-in-one-SEO for example (and there are others) allows you customise the title (and description) tags easily when you make changes on a page. If you don’t manually fill them in, it will automatically populate based on content. This may be fine if you have something like a blog post and have already keyword targeted the heading.

Now to get me some bling…

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