Title Tags

If you look at the very top of this browser window (above the part where you type in a web address, the VERY top of the window) you will see the words “SEO Title Tags – Ipswich Suffolk”. This is this pages title tag (which, coincidentally is the same as the main subject of this page), and its purpose is to tell the search engines before they even look at ANYTHING on this page what the page is all about, and as a direct result it is also the clickable part of your listing in the organic search results – meaning it is also the string of words which will encourage a human customer to click and visit your site. Don’t forget this small, but very important aspect of title tags – humans WILL see this, both when they are on your page and when they see your listing in google, Yahoo, Bing or any of the other search engines. Don’t simply target it for search ranking, also target it for persuading people to click the link by showing them that the page is relevant to what they are looking for.

The importance of a good title tags in SEO

Just by itself, this single tag accounts for around 10% of any web pages onsite SEO, and because of this it is the single most important element to get right. What many people do is to make the mistake of overloading the title tag with too many words, or repeating the same word over and over. As with all meta tag optimisation, this is all about balance. Every single word that is added to your title tag will dilute the effect of the others – for example if you just had “Ipswich” as your title tag, that single word carries roughly 10% of the seo for the page – meaning you are much more likely to rank for that single word. However, single words tend to be much more competitive as they are much more ambiguous. For example if we are trying to rank for the keyword Ipswich we are up against every single business based in ipswich, every business who delivers or has clients in Ipswich and every information site relating to the town as well as any individuals blog who is based here.

Longer title tags explained

Conversely if we were to have the title tag “SEO Title Tags – Ipswich Suffolk” (which we do) then we now have a 5 word title tag. Each individual word carries a 2% score (approximately) which is heavily diluted from our original offering. However, we now have a title tag which firstly describes in a lot more detail to potential visitors what the page covers, and we have a huge advantage……..that 5 word string has within it a massive number of combinations, each and every one of which gives us another opportunity to rank for a keyword string. None of those strings will be searched for anywhere near as much as the single word “Ipswich”, but the people searching for these combinations are more likely to be interested int eh actual content of this page, giving us a higher chance of converting each visitor into an enquiry to our business. Lets look at just how many combinations the 5 word phrase gives us:

SEO Ipswich
SEO Suffolk
SEO Ipswich Suffolk
title tags
title tags ipswich
title tags suffolk
SEO tags
SEO tags Ipswich
SEO tags Suffolk
SEO tags Ipswich Suffolk
SEO title tags
SEO title tags Ipswich
SEO title tags Suffolk
SEO title tags Ipswich Suffolk
SEO title
SEO title Ipswich
SEO title Suffolk
SEO title Ipswich Suffolk

Bear in mind that we also have the potential of hitting any of these phrases typed in any order – i.e. SEO Ipswich and Ipswich SEO both have a similar potential for a good ranking based on this single title. Each and every one of these keyword strings is going to be searched for many less times per month than the generic “Ipswich”, but the combination of all of these phrases is a sizeable chunk of searches per month, and every single searcher finding our page in the results and then clicking through has now been pre-qualified – i.e. they already have an idea of what this page is about and as a result are more likely to be interested in what we have to offer.

For this reason, we tend to prefer strings of between 3 and 5 words, in which there are a number of different combinations to maximise the targetting of an individual page whilst also keeping the percentage weighting to the highest levels. If your home page has your company name as part of the title tag, it is probably worth stripping it out. Anybody searching for your company should find it in first spot in Google anyway (if your company is NOT in first spot for an exact name search, sack your current SEO company – right now – this is a FUNDAMENTAL first base for any SEO campaign), and those words in the title are damaging your chances of you ranking for your moneymaking keywords. Every single page of your site should have a unique meta title which identifies it and differentiates it from the other pages of your site. If you have an ecommerce store, the title should be your product name. If you have a blog, it should be a succinct summary of the page.

As with all of the other onsite SEO techniques explained on this site, if you elect to have us perform your SEO for you we will take care of this on your behalf. If you are looking to complete your own SEO then we trust that the information above has helped to explain things. If you do want more assistance, please leave a comment on this page and we will reply as soon as possible. Alternatively contact us for help with your title tags.