When many sites are designed, they are created with a look and feel while not taking into account the proper way to structure a site or pages for real organic search engine optimization. Even if the designer, webmaster or even owner is aware of the importance of proper SEO structure – many leave it for a later time. This includes the page titles.
The problem with this approach is many fold actually. The site may be set up in a dynamic way (images, flash, video etc.) where adding images optimizing content may not be as easy as it looks. The navigation could be set up where the links and page titles cannot be changed easily. There is also the time and lost revenue based on not having the site set up correctly. Thankfully, most websites are flexible and can be changed so they are better optimized and one of the most important changes you can make is fixing and improving your titles.
Page Titles
If I had to name the first thing I look for when a client or potential customer asks me to analyze their website, it is the poor title structure. When websites have weak titles, they are really giving the rest of their website little chance to succeed through natural search listings. Keywords, links and other search engine and marketing techniques will not work to it’s fullest potential towards strong organic search ranking if the website has poor titles.
The first is the html or browser title. This is the page title in the html code itself. It is the title you see when you put a term, word or phrase into a search engine. The summary title in the search engine results (usually in blue) is the html title. It is also the words you se in the top of your browser when you are on a website. It is not visual on the site copy itself. The browser title is meant to tell the search engines what the page on your site is about.
Titles are meant for Search Engines more than for people
You want to create great titles for the pages to help the search engine see that is a high relevant website and page to fit what someone is searching for. That is what having a high ranking is all about. Google is looking for the most relevant websites, along with popularity and other aspects in their ranking analysis - to show the web user (searcher).
Creating well crafted titles simply make the above process easier for Google to rank you and bring out the most in the page. You rarely - if ever see a page ranked first with an html title that says “Page 1” or “My Website” or anything like that - no matter how good the actual content is on the site. Yes, the page and site can still have a decent ranking - but normally it does not. Let’s put it this way: Any ranking a website or page can get with a bad title will have a better ranking with a stronger page title. I would say that is a 100% fact.
A good title is not as important to a web searcher. Once a person is on the website, they can see for themselves where they are and what the page has. As long as there are good internal links and navigation, the user will know where they are. Header (bolded visible titles) are more important as you do want to tell the user where they are but the html code is all for Google.
HTML Browser Titles
The html browser title is the title or words you see when you are searching on Google or other search engines. The results that appear will have a summary title that is a link. It’s usually in blue and it is what you would click when you want to visit that site from the search results page. It is also the phrase or groups of words you see at the top of your windows browser when you are actually on the site itself.
If you view the source code of a website (the actual script language in notepad), you will see tags like this <title>Katie’s Gift Baskets Home Page</title>. That is actually a bad home page title. It is readable on the site though.
When the website is created, each page is set up as their own page entity – or at least they should. The website pages that rank well are the ones that match content with proper html browser titles so the search engines can get a clearer picture of what the site is about. It is most important to learn and understand that each page should have it’s own unique html title that is specific to the page itself. It’s best to give an example of a company and optimize some titles so it’s understood easier.
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Next post will be part 2 and will show several examples of titles. I'll also talk about Meta tags, Header Titles and more. Feel free to ask a question or reply with your own thoughts.
Nick Hunter
SEO Consultant
email me direct at aitbroker@gmail.com for phone/skype help or any Web Marketing Projects.
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