Page Title - Page Title Tag

Ssearch engine optimisation or SEO seeks to increase website visitors and business through natural search. SEO comprises on-page optimisation which involves the page content and the underlying code and off-page optimisation which relates to backlinks, links from other pages and in particular links from other websites.

Iin 2009, SEO Moz invited 72 of the top SEO experts from around the globe to give their opinion on the most important ranking factors in the search engine algorithms. They considered the trust or authority of the host domain to be the leading factor that is to say the PageRank of the homepage. They were of the opinion that title tag is the fourth most important SEO factor. It is the only on-page factor in the top five; the other four all relate to off-page factors - backlinking factors.

So what is the page title or the title tag? It is the line that appears at the very top left-hand side of your browser window. Here we have it in Firefox "family lawyer Sydney family law solicitor Sydney".

How is the title tag coded? You can see this by clicking on "View" at the top of your browser and then, page source or control plus 'U' and this opens up the coding, the source of the page and towards the top in the header we see the opening and closing of the title tag and here are the words 'family lawyer Sydney family law solicitor Sydney.'

The Google keyword tool is popular because it provides data on the most important search engine on the Internet and it is provided free of charge. We use the Google keyword tool to find related search terms for our websites and webpages and also to determine the popularity of keywords, the number of searches for that keyword each month. A family law solicitor in Sydney, would want to know the data for Google in Australia and the keyword tool provides this option. Obviously it would be in  English and put in a series of keyword terms.

Here we have the output from the Google keyword tool. We can see that for relatively short keywords such as 'family law' the number of searches per month can be very large - 90,500 in Australia local search but for a more localised geographical search such as 'family law solicitor Sydney' there are 73 a month and for 'family law solicitor Sydney 210.

It is believed that about 30% of searches conducted these days are for geographical location such as 'family law solicitors in Sydney'. Now importance for website owners is that somebody who searches for 'family law solicitor Sydney' is actually a potential client. They are looking for a relevant solicitor.

Let us now look at the top page on Google for 'family law solicitor Sydney.' These are the free or organic searches and one should aim to be towards the top on Google for your keywords.

On the right are the page searches or Adwords and these days Google may have a Google map with the top seven websites on Google maps for some keywords and here you have it for 'family law solicitor Sydney' but is not universal and if you'd like to have your website listed by Google for Google maps, check to see whether they do it for your particular profession.

Let us now concentrate on the free or organic searches. The importance of top positioning on the Google search engine results page cannot be over emphasised. The web page in position '1' will receive 40% of searches whereas the web page in position '6' receives just 4% and the web page in position 10 receives just 1%.

Now let us look at the web page in position '7'. It is the only one on this page where the keyword phrase 'family law solicitor Sydney' appears in its entirety and yet this is in position '7'.

My program Keyword SEO Pro looks at the top 10 webpages for a keyword search and it will do this for a list of up to 50 keywords at a time. We can see on the right,  the PageRank of the individual page and on the left the homepage PageRank. Pink cells indicate that these pages are themselves homepages and we can see the website in position 7 'familylawyerSydney' has a PageRank of 2. The pages that are positioned above this page are not optimised for this complete keyword phrase but they have higher PageRanks and this gives them a preference over this web page.Remember that the HomePage PageRank is the number one factor on Google.

Google allows upto 65 characters in the PageTitle. One should use all or at least most of these 65 characters. If we look at these web pages, they have not made full use of the 65 characters.

This page does not have any of our keywords, family, law, solicitor or Sydney but is in position '3' and this can be accounted for by the fact that it has at least a few of the words and its PageRank in position '3' is '5' and this is why it outpositions the page in position '7'.

The page title is the most precious real-estate on your website particularly the page title of the homepage and you must use every character with the greatest of caution and respect. I do not believe that there is any value in including the company name many websites will incorporate the company name in the page title and you will see that on these 10 websites, eight of them have the company name in the page title such as 'Turner Freeman' and 'Dymocks'. It is often argued that people who know of the company would expect to be able to find them at the top of a Google search and I would agree: If somebody would put in 'Turner Freeman' they would expect to find them.

But you do not have to have 'Turner Freeman' in the page title. You can have it in the description tag and it will still appear and someone looking Turner Freeman lawyers that set of  words or keywords will be highlighted by Google and will be found on the top page. Nobody else is likely to have your company name in their page title and therefore you will receive top billing for your company name even if you don't put it in the page title.

Finally, do not waste characters and words. Only use words that people are likely to use in their searches. Do not for example use 'of' or 'leading'. People do not tend to use those in their searches.