In this article you’ll learn how to optimize Title Tags both for SEO ranking and click-thru rates. I’ll deliver a few tips I successfuly use with my site and bring to your attention what to avoid doing with your Title Tags.

In terms of SEO, the Title Tag is considered to be average importance by Google. Since the Off-Page Factors play a decisive role in a site’s ranking, it’s not imperative for the keywords to even be present in the Title Tag. Nevertheless, employing some easy practices when writing your webpage titles should benefit your SEO efforts.

Rules for making your Title Tag Google friendly:

1. Use only one Title Tag;

2. Place the keyword you’re targeting in the beginning of IT. This way you’re content is indexed more rapidly by Google and also improves ranking;

3. Don’t spam the Title Tag by stuffing it with a bunch of keywords. This will cause penalities from Google;

4. Avoid having duplicated or near-duplicated Title Tag copy in different pages of your website. This mistake leads to Google penalizing you for duplicated content. It’s irelevant whether the content below the title is unique or not. As a matter of fact, the Title Tag holds more weight than content and meta tags. This is an important note for those blasting articles to tens or even hundreds of article directories via article submission software. To have a good indexation ratio, spin each article title at least ten times. The title tag is an “effective” trigger for duplicate content.

Title Tag’s main role is to generate click-thrus

So, take your time and compose a title that will grab attention, creat curiosity and incite prospect to click the link he’s reading.

When a prospect first types his problem in Google search bar he already has an approximate image of what he expects to find. Your job as a marketer is to deliver on this expectancy.

Successful SEO is based on this formula: Ranking – Click-thru – Conversion. Ranking high doesn’t serve your purposes without a click-thru rate and a click-thru rate is in vain without conversion.

Until you reach the conversion faze, start building attractive title tags.

1. The title shouldn’t be longer than 7, maximum 8 words or 64 characters. The reason why is that Google only shows the first 64 characters in the search results pages.

2. Use the “pipe” symbol (“|”) instead of a hyphen in the Title. The pipe seems to command attention, thus improving click-thru rate while the hyphen tends to be associated with spamming.

• Generic Titles – don’t properly target your prospects because they don’t address a concrete problem. They seem more like stale advertising;
• Title tag that are keyword stuffed or monotonous – obtain very poor click-thru rate as they seem to turn off prospects;
• Title tags longer than 8 words – make scanning by the human eye more difficult. In most cases these titles are passed-by the prospects believing them as not matching the solution they have in mind;

A solution to these undesirable Titles is focusing on writing readable and marketable title tags, in other words, give the prospect what he wants to find and he will click your webpage.

The “How to” of this theoretical receipe resumes to:

> dividing your target market into small, manageable niche markets;

> deciding what is that your average prospect wants;

> piggybacking from the titles your competition writes and elaborate on them.

As a final note, manage Title Tag copywriting as if you would with an Adwords Ad. Constantly tweak and update it. Best copywriters spent more time composing the title than the actual salesletter.