Tag: titles

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SEO tips

How to use title tag for SEO

Title Tag SEO

The title tag is the most important HTML tag on your web page for generating traffic.  The title tag is a component of meta data and should be located in the head section of your HTML code. It should contain keywords that best describe the content on the page, and be no longer than 70 characters in length.

Update: In line with its mobile first philosophy Google has recently changed the way titles are displayed in its search results. Titles they are now measured in pixels – 512 to be exact. So now with the variations in character spacing, best practice is to use no more than 49 characters. By following this practice it has been discovered that around 99% of all titles will appear – with anything over the specified width truncated to fit within the designated 512 pixels.

The title tag also acts as the heading you see in the search results of Google and Bing. It is the link users click on to visit your website and must feature the targeted term up front for SEO. It should be crafted to grab the user’s attention and be relevant to the content on the webpage. Your business name can be included but I recommend it’s best place it at the end. Title tags must be rich in descriptive keywords for effective SEO. If you get this right your website WILL generate traffic.

When building a website you must ensure that every page has the capability to display a unique and keyword rich title tag. If this capability does not exist you increase the chance of duplication, which search engines have been known to penalize.

Here are some key points to remember about title tags

  • If you site is about selling Widgets it belongs in the title tag – “Buy Widgets from Widgetland”
  • If you sell different sizes there should be one page for each – “Buy small Widgets from Widgetland”
  • Same with location – “Buy small Widgets in Widgetville from Widgetland”

Why do this? Well, put yourself in the position of a user who wants to buy a Widget. Imagine the thought process when poised over a keyboard…

“I need to buy three widgets but only small ones. I need them today and don’t want to travel too far”

Luckily our user actually lives in Widgetville, so chances are the query will be something like buy small widgets widgetville. Close to an exact match – great.

Luckily you took my advice because search engines are in the business of serving only relevant content to users, which means your site will have a pretty good chance of showing at or near the top of that search result page. Our user looks at the link and thinks “Bingo”, and clicks through. You now have a visitor – thanks to the title tag and SEO.

Categories
SEO tips

How to use headings for SEO

Headings use for SEO

Using headings correctly on your web page can drastically improve your website’s chances of ranking well in search engines. Headings are implemented in HTML as tags and range from H1 to H6.

The use of headings in a document is standard practice – even before the Internet was around. Structurally, headings are considered crucial because they break down the contents of a page into easily digestible portions. This aids a reader to better comprehend a document and therefore achieve a greater understanding. Headings should contain enough information to give the reader an overview of the content in each section. The first heading in an HTML web document is known as an h1 tag and should describe the document’s content. Headings can range from the h1 tag to a depth of h6.

From an SEO perspective the h1 tag is important because it signals the theme of a page to search engines. The h1 tag is one of the three main references web crawlers use to index content in search results, so getting this element right could yield considerable benefit for your website.

Difference between headings and titles

Although both have some common meanings, the h1 tag is not to be confused with the title tag, which is the actual name of the document and is viewed as separate to the general flow of body text. Both are important because the title and h1 tag, plus the body contents of a web document are used by spiders to index the page in search engines. The more descriptive and relevant these elements are to the user query, the better chance your site will have of ranking higher in the results.

There must be only one h1 tag per page. It must be keyword rich and as descriptive as possible. The h1 tag should feature the targeted term and indicate how it applies to the rest of the document.

By acting on this one HTML element, it will improve the way search engines see your website. Similar action with all other elements will drastically improve things so it’s well worth the effort.