Title Goes Here

One of the hottest requests I get from clients these days is to “optimize their site’s copy to improve their organic search ranking.”

Which makes total sense—with companies feeling the pinch of a tightening economy, and marketing budgets always being the first on the casualty list, nobody wants to pay-per-click if you can get folks to click for free.

But, as I tell my clients, the best-written, keyword-laden pages will take you just so far. If you want to score higher a higher rank, you have to optimize everything. Not just copy. (Though it’s a good start.)

So, let’s start with tags. Now most folks are already familiar with the Meta tag family—description, keyword & robot. But one they may not be on a first-name basis with is the Title tag.

Title tags are by far one of the most important—and overlooked—tool when trying to raise your search engine rankings. Here’s why:
• Search engines use the text contained in your Title tag to determine what the page is about.
• The text that makes up your Title tag is the clickable link that appears when your site is listed in organic rankings.

Add to that, as the name suggests, Title tags are the title of each page of your site. And they’re often what people first see while waiting for your site to load. And if they bookmarked a page on your site, yep, you guessed it, your Title tag becomes the name of their bookmark.

So, you need to make the most of them.

Here are a few Title Tag tips:
• Limit the text to 65 characters—including spaces—as most search engines & browsers cut off after that
• Include your company name in each tag
• Include up to two keywords in each tag that you want the page to rank for
• Create a unique title tag for each page—this is NOT the time to cut and paste
• Make each tag a concise statement about the main focus of your content