What is so special about a title tag?

HTML <title>title</title> tags are responsible for the words that show up on the top of your browser. Have you ever visited a web-page and found the title said “untitled document”? If not, this can give you an idea of how many people are out there making such a horrible mistake: ?intitle:untitled.document?.

(By the way, the link above is a Google query that asks the search engine to look only at the title of the page. In this case, it’s searching for the string “untitled.document”; the dot represents a space. Experiment with this people!)

Most people aren’t even aware of the power of what title tags can do for a web-page. It can dramatically help your page with search engines. Title your pages with phrases and keywords that you want people to find your page with. It helps to do some research on title tags and how they work, as well as overture’s [free] keyword selector tool.

I remember when I first started learning HTML…
[cue the harp] I thought that a title tag was just good for putting the domain name of the website and that’s it. Sometimes, I didn’t even give the page a title. ;(

Think about it; when you are surfing the net and looking through pages and pages of search engines, the first thing you look at are the titles of the pages. Search results often display the title of a page in bold for a reason.

Three simple tips to get started:

1. Think about how you would want someone to search for your site and brainstorm some keywords and phrases.
2. Do your homework within your niche and find out what other sites are doing with their titles.
3. Test your titles and track your pages. The winner stays. The loser has to pack it’s crap and go home.