Exceptionally important. Is that the weight you place on the significance of title tag construction for your website? If SEO is important to your business, it should be! Here are a few quick tips and an excellent FREE tool to help you build great title tags for each of your website’s pages.
First, the free tool: Title Creator Tool. Find it here: http://int-seo.com/title_creator_tool.php
This tool’s name is self-explanatory and using it is equally intuitive; it will create a relevant title tag from existing content, even suggesting an order for the words based upon your content. The maker of the tool, INT, says the tool is not an outright “title writer,” but with pages that are constructed with rich, relevant content, you might find that your title writes itself with their program.
In my use of the tool, I found it created keyword-relevant titles that were jumbled – that’s because it is based on the order of the words it saw in my content. For example, I ran one of my recent posts (that I titled 11 Free Non-Profit Webinars In May 2011) that was written with certain keywords in mind. When I ran the post through the tool, it suggested the title be Profit Webinars 11 SafeHouse Web Free 2011. Of course, this is not a flaw and is to be expected; it produced the suggestion based on the keywords it saw and on my oftentimes not-so-stellar writing!
A helpful hint and explanation was also produced by the tool’s results of my query:
Make your title readable
Your page title should be easy to read; not just a list of keywords… make your title flow.
It definitely gives you a great starting point for a keyword-rich title, letting you tweak as-needed.
Plus, it performs another important function that will help with your overall SEO strategy; it evaluates existing or new-idea titles for keyword relevance, or you can just check the title you currently have for relevance.
Be consistent
The thematic consistency between title and content is important, but the title supersedes the content as long as there is a correlation. This tool may suggest that you use better support of your Title Keywords in page content.
Some people will talk about putting the cart before the horse, or vice verse, when formulating an SEO plan. It’s true that you must have a plan that identifies your target audience, your niche, researched and relevant keywords, a platform for your product or service, and a slough of other important considerations. Coincidingly, it is never a bad idea to go back and evaluate what you have already done; the Title Creator Tool gives you a quick and easy look at that little slice of the pie. It’s great.
A few months back, I wrote a quick post about the Tag Counter Tool from INT and how it can help your SEO. I liked its simplicity and usefulness. Last week, G. Ed Conly from INT wrote to let me know about this new Title Creator Tool and I am passing it along here as another piece of information. No affiliate stuff going on (it’s free) – I just like the tools and think you might, too.
What’s a title tag? It generates the most important thing people see in search results (shown here as Page Title):
Now for some basic title tag tips:
- Exceptionally Important: Your page title is the link that will appear in search results. This is what people click on in the search results and is the first thing people see about your site. Google, Bing and Yahoo place significant weight on it.
- The title is best if left short – 5 to 9 words – with most important parts in the first 65 characters.
- Each page should have its own unique page title.
- Your primary keywords should occur early in your page title – within the first 5 words, when possible.
- Generic words such as “home” or “home page” or “welcome to” should not appear in your page title. Save your greetings for the content people read when they engage your website.
- Don’t forget to use relevant keyword modifiers in your page title to help draw in more relevant traffic. Read about how using the ~ [tilde] character can help.
- Take measures to ensure your page title sets you apart from competing websites.
And here’s my “special” title tag tip: Incorporate a Call To Action in the title, when appropriate.
“Laptop computer accessories now 25% off at Company Name [or niche keyword].”
That’s a pretty subtle Call, but let your imagination work on what is right for your own business.
