For search engine optimization, think hard about the most important sentence on your page: its title tag. Written well, this phrase can have the most power to get your site well-situated in search results for your site’s key themes.

You should have your three to four most crucial keywords or phrases in your title tag. Begin your sentence with the most significant, and you can repeatedly insert these words in your sentence to highlight their importance. If I wanted to attract people to a site offering cheap web design, I might try the following:

Forget about branding here. Though it makes sense to want to stick your business’s trademarks right up front in your title tag, it also makes sense to remember that for less well-known brands, it’s unlikely that people are searching for you specifically. Instead, that title tag should have those key words and your own name can show up in other elements of your site, like your logo. If you have keywords in your company’s title–like our sample Acme Web Design Company, stick those in the title tag, but leave them for later. In the same vein, keep out the flowery sales pitch and extra descriptors, besides actual terms that might be used in searching for your type of services.

Include a word that highlights your niche or region in the title tag. You won’t get far trying to compete on “web design” but if Acme Web Design Company is in Columbus, Ohio, you could make much better progress using a title tag like “Web Design, Columbus, Ohio: Low Cost Web Design in Columbus, Ohio by The Acme Web Design Company”

A long title tag can be a better choice. Some say 70 character is the max length for your title tag but while, only those first 70 show up in a browser’s header, search engine robots read all of them. Those robots won’t penalize you for exceeding 70 characters and you’ll see site in competitive areas taking advantage of those long titles. Write what meets your needs. “You need to get the most important words and phrases in there to explain what products or services you offer.

Alternate title tages in your site’s inner pages. Using a long title tag, you can’t fit everything. However, you have other places to make your point on other pages. Rather than go with just “services,” Acme could go with “low cost, web design services” (see all those key terms?) on its services page. Our “contact” page could highlight our location one more time, and so on and so forth. Many web architects do use the same title tag on each page, but that’s a mistake. Vary yours to fit all your important keywords and phrases.

Don’t go to the search engines and do a Site Submit. It is a waste of time and can hurt you, just come to our site and we will show you how to get indexed within a week, guaranteed!

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