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What is a title tag and how vital are titles for search engines? How do you use title tags when building web pages?
http://www.ipswich-web.co.uk/blog/articles/681/1/What-is-a-title-tag-and-how-vital-are-titles-for-search-engines-How-do-you-use-title-tags-when-building-web-pages/Page1.html
By Jonathan Young
Published on 21/11/2007
 
The Title Tag <title>your title</> is the one part of a web page you must always include when you're building web pages for your site.  Not only will it give your visitor an overall idea about your page content it will also give the search engine bots (spiders) the ability to rank you higher in the search engines if done correctly. 
The Title Tag <title> is the most important element when you build a web page
The Title Tag is so important to the search engines like Google, Yahoo and MSN.  Just changing these or adding them to your web pages can mean a huge jump in search engine rankings for your site, which obviously leads to more visitors.

Proper use of the title tag is just one of a few very powerful but equally simple seo techniques you can employ on your site.

Not having title tags on your web pages is a bit like going to your local library and finding every book piled up in the middle of the floor.  Worse still, not one of those books has any indication on the cover regarding it's contents - Chances of finding the book you want, s-l-i-m.

So first of all you'll need a 'whole site' title to go on your home page.  It's like the section titles in the library.  You know what I mean, things like; fiction, non-fiction etc.

Then you need to think about category titles, in the library these would be romance, business, childrens etc.  Hopefully you're getting the picture now...

Finally, you'll need titles for each article or web page you're writing content for.  These would be like the titles of each book.

If you do this religiously throughout your website, you'll be setting your pages up for maximum advantage when the spiders come searching from the likes of Google, Yahoo and MSN. Make your titles enticing and you've got a double whammy as more people will click the links to your site.

How to add a Title Tag to web pages

To set up a title tag just open up your web editor and in the <head> section of the HTML add:

<title>Your title here</title>

...and you're ready to go.

If you look to the top of your browser, you'll see the title of this page at the very top, so it's also great for 'humans'.

Just a few more things to consider when adding a title tag:

  • The titles you give your pages are used at the search engines as the first line of your listing, so make sure they contain keywords and phrases about your page.

  • Make them interesting - It's no good having a top page ranking in the search engines if your title is so boring no one clicks through.

  • Keep them to 64 characters - Take a look at Google and count the characters on any title including the spaces and you'll realise they cut the title off after this. If you can't keep your title to 64 characters, make sure the first 64 are the most interesting and make the most sense.
Ahemm...  You've probably noticed I'm using a few more than 64 on some of my articles, right?  Well this is because Yahoo publish a lot more than 64, so I'm testing a little theory out right now.