The <TITLE> tag of your Web page is arguably the most important HTML tag or element. All the search engines consider the keywords in this tag and generally give those keywords a lot of importance in their ranking system. Therefore, if you were to create one page with a keyword in the title tag, and another page with the same keyword in the body tag, the one with the keyword in the title will rank higher in most engines.

Many search engines use the HTML <TITLE> tag as the title of your page in the search results that appear to the user. What this means to you is that this HTML tag must not only work to your advantage for keyword scoring, but also must be compelling to the reader.

There are two elements to every Web page listing in the search engines:

1. Page title, which will be blue and an activated link to the site

2. Page summary description.

Of course both must be compelling, but the <TITLE> tag has a special relevance if only because so many search engines use it exactly as it appears on your page. The page description you offer in the META description tag will be used by some search engines but not by others. For this reason, the <TITLE> of the page is simply more important than the META description.

Here are the important principles to remember when writing page titles:

A. Longer <TITLE>s are often more effective because more words allow you to build a more compelling reason to visit a page.

B. People don't "read" text, they "recognize" words.

Point "A" is that longer <TITLE>s work better because it takes a certain number of words to persuade someone to take action remember, in a direct response approach its difficult to offer the key elements of time, money and value in just 2 words. People often scan headlines in brochures and magazines, even when they don't read the article itself. Since the title is usually a hyper link, it's a different color and is generally bolded and easier to read. When it's longer, there are more words with which you can "hook" a reader. Chances are people's eyes will scroll down a list of page titles and if something catches their eye, they will hopefully read the site description, and if you've done your work, they will be hooked.

Point "B" is that people don't read after about the time they turn 12 or 13 years old they recognize words. Educators know that people glance at words and recognize the words by the shape they see defined by the tops of the words. Don't believe it? Take a sentence in any newspaper or book and cover the bottom half of the words. You can still read the words with relative ease. Now cover the top of a different sentence. You'll find that the words are harder to read because there is not much difference in the shape or line of the words. This is because the bottoms of all words reach the bottom of the page along the line they're written on.

You see, you recognize words by the tops of those words, by the differences in the height of the different letters. You think to yourself, "interesting, but how does this apply to me and my marketing efforts?"

If people recognize words by looking at the tops of the words, and that this is accomplished because the tops of words vary in height and appearance, then sentences that start with just one capital letter and then lowercase letters will be easier to recognize and will get read first. Every little advantage helps you!

WORDS IN ALL CAPS ARE HARDER TO READ!!! PEOPLE DON'T LIKE TO READ THEM AND DON'T READ THEM AS EASILY. RECOGNIZING THE WORDS IN THE SENTENCES IS TEDIOUS AND THESE LINES ARE FREQUENTLY OVERLOOKED.

To further illustrate the "tops of words" principle, look at how difficult it is to read this sentence:

SeNtEnCeS ThAT VaRy CaPs AnD LoWErCaSe LeTtErS ArE mAdDEnInG AnD EvEn HarDeR To ReAd.

See what a difference the tops of words can make? For this reason, construct your <TITLE> tags and site title submissions with one capital letter to start the tag, and then use lower case letters for the rest of the site title. This little technique is just one more advantage that you can have over your Web site's competitors and others who would compete with your site's listing in the search results.

Example of a title tag:

Example:

<TITLE>Blue widgets sold here</TITLE>


The Title tag should always be within the <HEAD> area and should be the first line within that area.

QUICK TIPS:

? Always use your primary keywords in the title tag at least one or more times.

? Try to place your primary keywords at the start of the tag.

? Avoid listing the same word multiple times in a row since some engines may penalize for this. Instead, use the keyword multiple times, but separate them by other words in your text.

? Use the longer form and the plural form of a keyword when possible. For example, if you use marketing in your Title tag, a search on marketing or market will yield a match on most engines. However, words like companies will not always yield a match on company since company is not an exact "substring" of companies. In these cases you'll want to try and use both forms of the word.

? Longer titles are generally better than shorter ones. However, shorter ones can be used if you need to better emphasize a keyword that you're having trouble ranking well with, or if that engine appears to favor pages with shorter titles.

? Make your title interesting and "compelling" to the reader to convince them why they should click there.