Aleeya dotNet

What you choose for a page title can have a very big impact on search engine rankings. From how visitors glance over results from a search engine to how the search engines use the titles in calculating rankings, the title of the page can make a big difference in how you reach users.

When you choose a page title, you want to make sure that you use different and individual titles for every page on your website. As shown in the previous article - Where the Title is Seen [Links updated to reflect new permalinks and redesign] - The places that the title will be displayed can identify and distinguish one page in a search, bookmark, or shortcut from another. If someone bookmarks or makes a shortcut to 3 different pages on your website, you would want all 3 pages to have different titles. When spiders and robots gather the information from your webpage for displaying results in the search engine, you also want each page to have a different title. By doing this, it will also give you another chance to display your main keywords for the page. For example:

If a person is searching for "Dinty Moore microwaveable meals"  in a search engine, the title is what would capture the eye quickly. Most people will quickly skim over the Titles and get a quick idea of how that site would relate to what he or she was searching for by how the title reads. For example, in the search entries below, which title do you would think would be the one more people have gone to ?

1. Aleeya dotNet - Dinty Moore Microwaveable Trays
   The meals are excellent. For a quick and easy meal at work, … You are
   currently browsing an entry titled Dinty Moore Microwaveable Trays from the Aleeya …
   www.aleeya.net/reviews/dinty-moore-microwaveable-trays/ - 35k - Oct 13, 2005 - Similar pages

2. Aleeya dotNet
   The meals are excellent. For a quick and easy meal at work, … You are
   currently browsing an entry titled Dinty Moore Microwaveable Trays from the Aleeya …
   www.aleeya.net/reviews/dinty-moore-microwaveable-trays/ - 35k - Oct 13, 2005 - Similar pages

3. Dinty Moore Microwaveable Trays » Aleeya dotNet
   The meals are excellent. For a quick and easy meal at work, … You are
   currently browsing an entry titled Dinty Moore Microwaveable Trays from the Aleeya …
   www.aleeya.net/reviews/dinty-moore-microwaveable-trays/ - 35k - Oct 13, 2005 - Similar pages

4. Microwaveable » Aleeya dotNet
   The meals are excellent. For a quick and easy meal at work, … You are
   currently browsing an entry titled Dinty Moore Microwaveable Trays from the Aleeya …
   www.aleeya.net/reviews/dinty-moore-microwaveable-trays/ - 35k - Oct 13, 2005 - Similar pages

5. Dinty Moore
   The meals are excellent. For a quick and easy meal at work, … You are
   currently browsing an entry titled Dinty Moore Microwaveable Trays from the Aleeya …
   www.aleeya.net/reviews/dinty-moore-microwaveable-trays/ - 35k - Oct 13, 2005 - Similar pages

Answer: Number 3 actually had the most results being clicked from a search engine. The descriptions are the same, the links and the dates are the same, the only difference is the Title.

Number 1: Has the whole title of  the page on it that describes what the page is about, which is a good thing. The term "Dinty Moore" and "Microwaveable" are all used in the title which is a good thing. This will stress to the spiders and robots that search the page for indexing that these terms are of more importance than others. It also will repeat the key words in the link that will be used for keyword density and showing relativity of the keywords in the meta tags to the number of times it is used on the page. Having  the domain name in the title is also good.

Number 2: The title is too short. It only has the Domain name in the title, and the title describes the website in general.. not just what this page is about. This title needs to be longer and more descriptive.

Number 3: This title is the best out of all the choices. The difference between this choice and the first choice is the placement of the subject of the page before the domain name. When the reader skims down the search engine page results, the human eye will normally connect with the title that will show the keywords that the person is actually searching for. Because in English, we read left to right, then the best place to put the keywords in the title of the page - which in this case is:  Dinty Moore microwaveable meals. That part, being on the left, will catch the eye and the mind will see that quicker than if it were swapped around as in Example 1.

Number 4: This title needs to have more of a description of what the page is about, not "just" microwaveable. Here, you want to use the keywords of Dinty Moore so the reader will know just what is microwaveable when he or she glances over the list of titles.

Number 5: This title needs to have more of a description. this needs to tell what kind of Dinty Moore Products are reviewed here. Also, it would be good practice to put the domain name after the title of the page. When someone saves this page by bookmark or shortcut, it is handier to have your domain name on there so the person knows it is from your domain and not the actual Dinty Moore page.

How you want the reader to see your entry in a search result is just as important as the rank you want to achieve. With good optimized titles, now only will you be adding in keywords to help your content and keyword relation, but you will also be giving the reason for the viewer to choose your site over another. A spider or robot will not be able to know if the results are displaying the the sites that the reader wants to view.. just that the sites returned a match of what the reader entered in the search. It will then list them for the reader. Once the pages are listed on a search results page, then the reader will be glancing over the titles to see what closely matches a title that he or she was looking for. When using English, you want to put the more important part of the title to the left. This way, the person skimming and reading this in English will be scanning left to right. The left is where you want to start capturing the attention of the reader.

For a more in depth look at how to choose the page title, see the next article in this series Creating Captivating and Optimized Page Titles.