Role of Meta Title Tag in SEO

pshukla · 09-20-2008, 11:41 AM

Do you want to secure a top ranking in search engine result pages(SERP)?

I think every one is going to answer - Yes. And a very common belief is that add lot of most searched keywords in the meta tags of your web pages and see your site skyrocketing. But it feels highly frustrating when this magic proves of no avail. Remember, meta tags alone don't do a magic in getting better placed in the search pages. These meta tags sure help you to describe your web pages to a search engine and gain a better place in its results. But at the same time they help search engine too to prevent indexing of improper web pages. Which may have good weight keywords in their meta tags but having no relationship with the contents of the page.

Meta tags are the blocks which contain information about the contents of your web page and they exist into the head area of your web page. They are basically meant to communicate with the search engine. Most of the Meta tags are visible to the search engine only and not the visitor on your web page. But, Title tag is one which is visible to the search engine and the visitor as well. Most importantly, it attracts the search engine and the visitor very aggressively. Most search engines consider this tag as the primary information about the site and also an human visitor sees this information as the first thing on top left corner of the browser. Moreover, when one bookmarks the site, the text in this tag appears in the bookmarks list.

In this article, I have tried to focus mainly on 'Title Meta Tag' that how a good Title Meta Tag can render a great help in optimization of a website.

What is the significance of Meta Title Tag?

Amongst the three major Meta tags (Meta Title Tag, Meta Keywords Tag, Meta Description Tag) the Title Tag is one which is given the most weight by search engines' algorithms. In fact, this tag should be written so that it should give the idea about your site instantly. A perfect written Title tag can generate quick and appreciable traffic to your site. The text written in this tag appears as clickable text in the search engine result page (SERP) and if it is really meaningful and conveys most about the web page, more clickthroughs will be the result.

This small example explains the function of Meta Title tag better. Suppose I need to visit San Francisco and need a road map of the city and go to a book store to find the same. There are lot of books on tourism and travel with different titles but my attention will go to a title which says something like "Latest Road Map of San Francisco" rather than a title "All about San Francisco". May be the second book contains better information about the subject I am looking for. But the title of first one speaks exactly about what I need. This how a better title gains priority over the other because of the contents of its title. This is exactly what happens with search engine. It picks the most matching title with the query and places in its result page as clickable text.

Should the Company name appear in Title Tag

Well, I would say sure if your company is really a big entity like IBM, Microsoft or Cisco or some well know brand like Sony, Phillips etc. Because people may want to search for those companies or brands with their names. But in normal cases it should not be so.

Suppose, your company is "Larry Tours and Travels" in San Francisco. Instead of writing "Welcome to the home of Larry Tours and Travels" in the title tag it would be better to write something like "tour operators, travel agents, car rental,bay area tours, san francisco tours - Larry Tours and Travel". Do a good research to find best keywords and phrases which describe your site best. My suggestion is that the length of the title tag should be between 15 to 20 words making it attractive enough that it looks interesting to the person searching for your business and he clicks through.

Few tips for writing good Title tags.

Try including the content relevant keywords in the title tag. This would help placing your site better in search engine result page (SERP) when someone searches those keywords.

Also do not use repeating keywords and phrases in your title tag because this may be treated as spamming by search engines and they may affect your ranking.

Either don't include your company name in the title tag or add it after few most relevant keywords, phrases into the title tag.

Write different title tags for each web page of your website instead of writing a common title page for the complete site. Make sure that each title tag has relevance with the contents of that web page where it appears.

Try to keep the length of your title tag small (between 15 to 20 words). Some search engines allow small title tags only and truncate the extra part of the longer ones which at times may render your title tag completely meaningless.

I would say that write very meaningful, impressive title tag they are a really powerful can be best tool to optimize your site. The title tag has most dominant role while the search engines make their decision about the theme of the website. When a search for keywords is conducted, the Title tag is given heavy consideration by most search engine algorithms. As I said earlier, since each page in your website is unique so it needs a different Title tag.

So, Writing relevant and meaningful title tag is something which may achieve high rankings in search engine result pages (SERP) and result high clickthroughs to your site. The Meta Keywords Tag and Meta Description Tag also need to be taken care of and optimized equally in addition to that of Meta Title Tag to secure a place at the top of the search engines and in convincing a search engine that your site's contents are more relevant than that of your competitor's.

Article Author: Prashant K Shukla
Article Source: http://www.depositarticles.com

seoexpert · 09-20-2008, 03:36 PM

In past years meta tags were the thing to get your website listed, but then Google changed that. Now you need good, keyword rich content, meta tags, link building, and a few other things to get good rankings.

HopkinsMeve · 10-21-2008, 01:51 PM

I have read that if you mention meta tags to most Web builders, they immediately think of creating keyword lists for search engines to use when indexing Web pages. That's a natural response to years of conventional wisdom, which held that the keyword meta tag and its brethren were essential ingredients in any search engine optimization effort.

fromthe5 · 10-21-2008, 02:58 PM

Quote:

Title tag is one which is visible to the search engine and the visitor as well.

Well... In that the title tag is the actual link you click on to reach a page from the search engine results .. yes. But the tag itself is not visible to the surfer looking at your actual site.

Quote:

Should the Company name appear in Title Tag

No. Unless your company name is the term you want to rank for. Otherwise it just dilutes the effectiveness of the actual search terms in the title.

Quote:

Try to keep the length of your title tag small (between 15 to 20 words).

Far too many under normal circumstances. Again.. Too many words will dilute the weight of important words in the title. I usually keep it to eight words or less.

Quote:

Writing relevant and meaningful title tag is something which may achieve high rankings in search engine result pages

By itself .. no, unless you're going for a very noncompetitive (easy) keyword phrase. But you will have little chance to rank well for terms that are NOT in the title.

Description meta tag: This is used to describe what the page is about and will usually be shown under the (clickable) title in the search results. Google gives little value to this tag in terms of ranking for keyword phrases in this tag, but it is what the surfer will see and use to determine what the page is all about. Yahoo might give a little more value to the keywords in this tag, but not a lot.

Keywords meta tag: Google and Yahoo give no value to this tag at all in terms of ranking. MSN has given a little in the past. Nevertheless I use all three. (every possible advantage) All other meta tags are IMO totally worthless for ranking and just take up space.

Text targeted incoming links are still by far the most valuable tool for ranking.

In order of importance:

Incoming targeted text links.

Title tag.

Internal linking structure.

<H1> tags

There are lots more things that have different degrees of relevancy and they are all part of a successful formula, but without the above mentioned items you will have little chance of ranking for anything in a competitive market.

huffsfitness · 11-26-2008, 01:16 AM

<H1> Tags-Can someone please tell me what the heck they are and how do I use them???? I have a webjam and I read they they use <H1> tags. I did get my site mapped, but I am having trouble getting it 'verified' with Google because I am unable to paste the stinkin verification code into my CSS to prove that I am the sites owner. VERY FRUSTRATING I've tried and tried SEVERAL different spots in the code but for some reason google is unable to find it. Any help would be awesome. Thanks, Greg.

jnjc · 11-26-2008, 02:47 AM

Quote:

I am having trouble getting it 'verified' with Google because I am unable to paste the stinkin verification code into my CSS to prove that I am the sites owner. VERY FRUSTRATING I've tried and tried SEVERAL different spots in the code but for some reason google is unable to find it. Any help would be awesome. Thanks, Greg

.

There are two ways to get your site verified by google. One is to transfer a file with a name generated by google into your website's directory. The other is to place a meta tag into you index.html (could be index.php or index.htm), as far as I know it won't work if you are putting it in you .css file.

HTH,
JC

huffsfitness · 11-27-2008, 04:22 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by jnjc

.

There are two ways to get your site verified by google. One is to transfer a file with a name generated by google into your website's directory. The other is to place a meta tag into you index.html (could be index.php or index.htm), as far as I know it won't work if you are putting it in you .css file.

HTH,
JC

Thanks, I give er another go.

huffsfitness · 11-27-2008, 08:26 PM

Tried several times lat night and now I kep getting an error saying that couldn't verify because the meta tag wasn't in the right place. Says has to be after <head>...I've moved this around on the page like crazy---no luck. Also have tried their other method by uploading a HTML file to the location they say, but when I do for some reason when the address is displayed in the browser, it leaves out the . before the html extension!?!?
I just don't get it

jnjc · 11-28-2008, 12:38 AM

I had a look at the source of your page and I can't see the meta tag. have you removed it ? If so add it back in and then let me know and I can check it is in the correct location...

huffsfitness · 11-28-2008, 01:53 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by jnjc

I had a look at the source of your page and I can't see the meta tag. have you removed it ? If so add it back in and then let me know and I can check it is in the correct location...

Yes I removed it. I got desperate and started adding it where it would be visible to visitors on my homepage...I realize now how retarded that was..so I'll add it right now it will be at www.huffsfitness.com/googleXXX.html but I am expecting the same results as last time and it will probably cut out the . before html, ok done. Just tried it and this is what google says:
We've detected that your verification file returns a status of 404 (Not found) in the header
WHATEVER

Any help would be great. Thanks.

09-20-2008, 11:41 AM	#1 (permalink)
pshukla New Member Join Date: Sep 2008 Posts: 2	Role of Meta Title Tag in SEO Do you want to secure a top ranking in search engine result pages(SERP)? I think every one is going to answer - Yes. And a very common belief is that add lot of most searched keywords in the meta tags of your web pages and see your site skyrocketing. But it feels highly frustrating when this magic proves of no avail. Remember, meta tags alone don't do a magic in getting better placed in the search pages. These meta tags sure help you to describe your web pages to a search engine and gain a better place in its results. But at the same time they help search engine too to prevent indexing of improper web pages. Which may have good weight keywords in their meta tags but having no relationship with the contents of the page. Meta tags are the blocks which contain information about the contents of your web page and they exist into the head area of your web page. They are basically meant to communicate with the search engine. Most of the Meta tags are visible to the search engine only and not the visitor on your web page. But, Title tag is one which is visible to the search engine and the visitor as well. Most importantly, it attracts the search engine and the visitor very aggressively. Most search engines consider this tag as the primary information about the site and also an human visitor sees this information as the first thing on top left corner of the browser. Moreover, when one bookmarks the site, the text in this tag appears in the bookmarks list. In this article, I have tried to focus mainly on 'Title Meta Tag' that how a good Title Meta Tag can render a great help in optimization of a website. What is the significance of Meta Title Tag? Amongst the three major Meta tags (Meta Title Tag, Meta Keywords Tag, Meta Description Tag) the Title Tag is one which is given the most weight by search engines' algorithms. In fact, this tag should be written so that it should give the idea about your site instantly. A perfect written Title tag can generate quick and appreciable traffic to your site. The text written in this tag appears as clickable text in the search engine result page (SERP) and if it is really meaningful and conveys most about the web page, more clickthroughs will be the result. This small example explains the function of Meta Title tag better. Suppose I need to visit San Francisco and need a road map of the city and go to a book store to find the same. There are lot of books on tourism and travel with different titles but my attention will go to a title which says something like "Latest Road Map of San Francisco" rather than a title "All about San Francisco". May be the second book contains better information about the subject I am looking for. But the title of first one speaks exactly about what I need. This how a better title gains priority over the other because of the contents of its title. This is exactly what happens with search engine. It picks the most matching title with the query and places in its result page as clickable text. Should the Company name appear in Title Tag Well, I would say sure if your company is really a big entity like IBM, Microsoft or Cisco or some well know brand like Sony, Phillips etc. Because people may want to search for those companies or brands with their names. But in normal cases it should not be so. Suppose, your company is "Larry Tours and Travels" in San Francisco. Instead of writing "Welcome to the home of Larry Tours and Travels" in the title tag it would be better to write something like "tour operators, travel agents, car rental,bay area tours, san francisco tours - Larry Tours and Travel". Do a good research to find best keywords and phrases which describe your site best. My suggestion is that the length of the title tag should be between 15 to 20 words making it attractive enough that it looks interesting to the person searching for your business and he clicks through. Few tips for writing good Title tags. Try including the content relevant keywords in the title tag. This would help placing your site better in search engine result page (SERP) when someone searches those keywords. Also do not use repeating keywords and phrases in your title tag because this may be treated as spamming by search engines and they may affect your ranking. Either don't include your company name in the title tag or add it after few most relevant keywords, phrases into the title tag. Write different title tags for each web page of your website instead of writing a common title page for the complete site. Make sure that each title tag has relevance with the contents of that web page where it appears. Try to keep the length of your title tag small (between 15 to 20 words). Some search engines allow small title tags only and truncate the extra part of the longer ones which at times may render your title tag completely meaningless. I would say that write very meaningful, impressive title tag they are a really powerful can be best tool to optimize your site. The title tag has most dominant role while the search engines make their decision about the theme of the website. When a search for keywords is conducted, the Title tag is given heavy consideration by most search engine algorithms. As I said earlier, since each page in your website is unique so it needs a different Title tag. So, Writing relevant and meaningful title tag is something which may achieve high rankings in search engine result pages (SERP) and result high clickthroughs to your site. The Meta Keywords Tag and Meta Description Tag also need to be taken care of and optimized equally in addition to that of Meta Title Tag to secure a place at the top of the search engines and in convincing a search engine that your site's contents are more relevant than that of your competitor's. Article Author: Prashant K Shukla Article Source: http://www.depositarticles.com

09-20-2008, 03:36 PM	#2 (permalink)
seoexpert Bronze Member Join Date: Sep 2008 Posts: 45	In past years meta tags were the thing to get your website listed, but then Google changed that. Now you need good, keyword rich content, meta tags, link building, and a few other things to get good rankings. __________________ SEO \| Website Design

10-21-2008, 01:51 PM	#3 (permalink)
HopkinsMeve New Member Join Date: Oct 2008 Posts: 8	I have read that if you mention meta tags to most Web builders, they immediately think of creating keyword lists for search engines to use when indexing Web pages. That's a natural response to years of conventional wisdom, which held that the keyword meta tag and its brethren were essential ingredients in any search engine optimization effort. __________________ Christmas Poems New Year SMS Last edited by HopkinsMeve; 10-21-2008 at 01:57 PM.

11-27-2008, 08:26 PM	#8 (permalink)
huffsfitness New Member Join Date: Nov 2008 Location: Southern Oregon Posts: 14	Tried several times lat night and now I kep getting an error saying that couldn't verify because the meta tag wasn't in the right place. Says has to be after <head>...I've moved this around on the page like crazy---no luck. Also have tried their other method by uploading a HTML file to the location they say, but when I do for some reason when the address is displayed in the browser, it leaves out the . before the html extension!?!? I just don't get it __________________ www.huffsfitness.com

11-28-2008, 12:38 AM	#9 (permalink)
jnjc Moderator Join Date: Jun 2008 Posts: 365	I had a look at the source of your page and I can't see the meta tag. have you removed it ? If so add it back in and then let me know and I can check it is in the correct location... __________________ www.solasit.com.au Website Design and Development Melbourne, Australia

11-26-2008, 01:16 AM	#5 (permalink)
huffsfitness New Member Join Date: Nov 2008 Location: Southern Oregon Posts: 14	<H1> Tags-Can someone please tell me what the heck they are and how do I use them???? I have a webjam and I read they they use <H1> tags. I did get my site mapped, but I am having trouble getting it 'verified' with Google because I am unable to paste the stinkin verification code into my CSS to prove that I am the sites owner. VERY FRUSTRATING I've tried and tried SEVERAL different spots in the code but for some reason google is unable to find it. Any help would be awesome. Thanks, Greg.

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