4 Simple SEO Tactics Most Small Businesses Forget – Tip #2
It'll make sense by the end of the post
Now that we’ve seen where to start with keyword research and that crazy, some may even say zany, Latent Semantic Indexing stuff, let’s take a look at one great way to use some of those keywords.
A Rose By Any Other Name…
Titles matter… they just do. I’m not talking about your Uncle Rico who insists on referring to everyone as “chief” or “boss.” No, the titles we’re talking about are a little less smarmy.
We’ll concern ourselves with page titles… web page titles in fact. A title is the little phrase that comes up in the upper left-hand corner of your browser window when you land on a web page. Take a look at the example below.
So what’s the big deal about titles?
Imagine walking into your next mixer, networking event, or other non-descript glad-handing session, and instead of filling out your name tag with your God given name, you simply leave it blank. When I see this, my first inclination is to fill in the blank with a host of colorful monikers – some of which might be accurate, some not so much.
Indeed, we all need a title. And while your name might not tell others what you are about, the title tags on your site pages do.
With this in mind, how should you choose those all important title tags? Glad you asked.
Remember the keyword research you did in tip #1. Shameless deep-linking opportunities aside, revisit your keywords on each page and select the keyword or keyword phrase that really describes the page content best. That’s your title.
Each page title should be different according to the content on the page. According to those who presumably know this stuff, optimal title length is about 65 characters including spaces. Primarily, this is so your title will fit in the limited space it has in the upper left hand corner of your browser window.
Also, don’t bother with stop words. What are stop words? The common little words that join parts of speech but add little (guess that depends on the context, but go with me on this one). So you can leave out words like “the, to, and, from.” They don’t add anything in this case and Google just ignores them. You want to use all of your 65 characters to add search value to your title.
How do you add a page title?
Couple of ways. If you’re using a WYSIWYG editor, there should be a menu option to add the HTML code to your page. Dreamweaver makes this really easy with a “title” field right in the user interface.
If you want to add the code yourself, no problem. Just cut and paste the following between the <head> </head> tags.
<title>Page title goes here</title>
Seems like an insignificant little tactic, but it can be extremely powerful in telling Google what your site pages are really about.
Here’s the Camaro part
One warning. As with keywords, just because you tell Google your page is about a certain topic, doesn’t mean Google believes you. You have to have the content to prove that your page supports that page title or keyword.
So if your site is about cars, and you use your keyword ninja skills to deduce that the top car keyword search term is “bitchen Camaro,” but not only is your Camaro really not all that bitchen, but you don’t even have a Camaro, bitchen or not, on your page… you might want to reconsider titling the page “Bitchen Camaro.”
Instead, think about using a term that actually appears on the page fairly frequently (aka, keyword density). Maybe “crappy Firebird” or “explosive Pinto” or “must-have-a-bad-mustache-to-drive-Corvette.” You get the idea.
Image by dave_7 courtesy of flickr Creative Commons
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When I talk to smaller companies about their websites and optimization, it is easy to understand how Search Engine Optimization (SEO) gets swept under the rug.
