Title Tags – Top Ten Mistakes

When it comes to getting your web pages ranking well in search engines, title tags play a very important role – in fact title tags carry the highest weightage. In spite of this, most web pages have very poorly written title tags.

Search Engine Optimization is the best way to drive traffic to your website – and the best part is it is totally free. When search engines are ranking your web page, they give the most importance to what is in your title tags – Hence it makes sense to put some time and effort into writing some good title tags.

In this post I have highlighted some of the common title tag mistakes:

Mistake #1: Using the Company Name in the title tag. If some one is searching for your company on the internet then they will enter your company name in the search engine. This will lead them to your company website whether you use it in your title tag or not.

So using company name in your title tag is a waste of real estate.

Mistake #2: Not using Keywords in the title tag – Use the keywords that you have assigned for that page. If your keyword is ‘baby bath toys’, make sure you use that exact phrase in your title tag.

Mistake #3: Placing the most important keywords at the end of the title tag – Don’t do this…Use up to three keywords in a title tag and place them in the order of importance. Place the most important keyword at the beginning of the title tag.

Mistake #4: Stuffing with too many keywords – Use only a maximum of 67 to 70 characters in your title tag – Don’t stuff it with too many words.

Mistake #5: Not using a title tag at all – This is probably the worst mistake. Don’t ever leave your title tag blank. This is one of the most important pieces of information you are giving to the search engines. All the search engine algorithms use this tag to determine the rankings.

Mistake #6: Not related to content – Don’t try to fool the search engines. Search engines compare the title tag with the content on your page. If they are not related your rankings will be affected.

Also, by using an irrelevant title tag you are annoying the visitors to your site. They come to your site hoping to find information related to your title tag and they find information totally unrelated to what they come in for – Not a good experience.

Mistake #7: Not enticing to eye – Use upper case and lower case letters appropriately. First impressions do count. A very bad example of not using the proper case letters would be – example ‘Xyz cOmPutErs’.

Mistake #8: Having same title tag on every page – Every page on your site is unique and you have to treat it as such. Every page should have its own keywords and hence every page should have its own unique title tag.

Remember, Search Engines rank web pages and not web sites.

Mistake #9: Using the same title for a post and a page – For your blog keep the title of a post and the title of the page different. The blog title cannot always make a good page title.

Mistake #10: Not devoting time to writing a proper title tag – Titles give the first impressions about your site. You can have the best site but if you don’t have a good and captivating title then people will not click on it…



Now go ahead and create some killer title tags !!!!

Best,