Tuesday, September 20, 2011

SEO: Create unique, accurate page titles

7:29 AM | Posted by DOTA | | Edit Post
Indicate page titles by using title tags
A title tag tells both users and search engines what the topic of a particular page is. The <title> tag should be placed within the <head> tag of the HTML document (1). Ideally, you should create a unique title for each page on your site.
Indicate page titles by using title tags

<html>
<head>
<title>Brandon's Baseball Cards - Buy Cards, Baseball News, Card Prices</title> <meta name="description=" content="Brandon's Baseball Cards provides a large selection of vintage and modern baseball cards for sale. We also offer daily baseball news and events in">
</head>
<body>

(1) The title of the homepage for our baseball card site, which lists the business name and three main focus areas.

Page title contents are displayed in search results
If your document appears in a search results page, the contents othe title tag will usually appear in the first line of the results (iyou're unfamiliar with the different parts of a Google search resultyou might want to check out the anatomy of a search result video by Google engineer Matt Cutts, and this helpful diagram of a Google search results page). Words in the title are bolded if they appear in the user's search query. This can help users recognize if the page is likely to be relevant to their search (2).

(2) A user performs the query [baseball cards]. Our homepage shows up as a result, with the title listed on the first line (notice that the query terms the user searched for appear in bold).

The title for your homepage can list the name of your websitebusiness and could include other bits of important information like the physical location of the business or maybe a few of its main focuses or offerings (3).

 best practices
Accurately describe the page's content
Choose a title that effectively communicates the topic of the page's content.
Avoid:
  • choosing a title that has no relation to the content on the page
  • using default or vague titles like "Untitled" or "New Page 1"

Create unique title tags for each page
Each of your pages should ideally have a unique title tag, which helps Google know how the page is distinct from the others on your site.
Avoid:
  •  using a single title tag across all of your site's pages or a large group of pages

Use brief, but descriptive titles
Titles can be both short and informative. If the title is too long, Google will show only a portion of it in the search result.
Avoid:
  • using extremely lengthy titles that are unhelpful to users  stuffing unneeded keywords in your title tags

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