SEO Mistakes 1 – Title Tags
Your name here
Millions of sites on the internet have one thing in common, they are not optimized for SEO. Over the next few posts I’ll ask you to look at your own site to make sure you are doing all you can to optimize your site.
This is simple stuff, all you will need is access to your webpage to make some changes.
1. Your Page Title.
a. Your Page title is best to be kept below 70 characters, anything more and it will be truncated by Yahoo, Bing or Google.
b. The first word in your title holds 50% of the authority of the entire title, so make sure it is a great word, you would think to put in your company name here, but that is a rudimentary mistake most people make. Take the example of a company called BattPlus, selling cell phone batteries.
instead of a title such as – BattPlus
Change it to – Cell Phone Batteries – Battplus
c. Page titles should not be the same for all pages in your site. Add as much variation as possible. Optimize the title tag for the page contents.
e.g. A Page talking specifically about replacement iPhone Batteries should have a title tag like this
iPhone Replacement Batteries – BattPlus
d. Spacing. This has been debated, but using spacing in the title is no problem, using ‘|’ is ok, as is, “_” or “-”. Just remember they are all considered a character, and eat into that 70 character limit. Also, title tags are not case sensitive.
Next Post – SEO Mistakes 2 – Keywords
Man this post is short and sweet! Someone else writes in this manner too. Does the name Seth Godin mean anything to you?
Optimizing your page title is such a simple thing to do and I see so many sites where it is not done. Many times they have their company name or some generic term such as ‘Products’ or ‘Services.’ Very valuable post!
I have more hair than him though….
Looking good so far. The examples are great – very easy to understand.
Thanks for the comment Barbara.
Hi there, This is a nice post and definitely beneficial. However, how do you know that “The first word in your title holds 50% of the authority of the entire title”? That’s not true.
Hi Patti,
This comes from a combination of posts from major SEO companies analysis as well as hints from the Google Webmaster blog.
I have myself experimented with several pages using single words to multiple words and yes, it does seem that this in-fact true.
I would also like your feedback on what you have learned about the Title Tag and why you may disagree with my finding.
Looks and sounds excellent. Several high level sources have stated that the dash is greatly preferred over the underscore by at least Google’ SEs.
Thanks your for the excellent post – I’ll follow your progress.
Hi Gary,
This is correct, when using a title on your page, the “-” is better than the “_”.
e.g. http://www.domain.com/this-is-a-comment.html
How much of a difference it makes, I am not sure. I’ll pose the question to the Google Webmaster.
[...] SEO Mistakes 1 – Title Tags | Smoothape – Mutterings and Oddities blog.smoothape.com/2009/08/16/seo-mistake – view page – cached [caption id=attachment_173 align=alignleft width=200 caption=Your name here][/caption] Millions of sites on the internet have one thing in common, — From the page [...]
thanks for this, I’ve read lots of reports on title tags and this seems to make sense. I added my company info, then some zipcodes too, it seems that the first word or words get the most authority.
Bookmarked!
Great read, I have tagged your website as I did find you on google so you now have a loyal reader. Do you guest blog at all for other blogs and do you accept guest bloggers?