Improving search engine results with descriptive page titles
Question:
What is a good title for my webpage? I want something funny, but doing that means it won’t be very descriptive.
Answer:
A few pointers on page titles and search engine optimization (SEO).
For the titles of your articles and blog entries, my suggestion is that if you want to do something funny or not descriptive, you use a subtitle or something similar. The title itself should be something very descriptive. It’s not as much fun, but will get your more readers. Here’s a quick intro to title tags and SEO:
When someone seacrch Google for “definition of topic123“, we want them to get to your article about topic123. How do Google and Yahoo and MSN and others know to point people to your webpage? They look at your page content, of course. But all content is not judged equally. Certain info on your page will “stand out” more in a search engine’s mind:
1) Words that are boldfaced or underlined (the search engine knows these must be important to you)
2) Information that is repeated a lot (if your page keeps mentioning George Clooney, then the search engines know he must be the topic of your article)
3) The title tag, and anything in a larger font than the rest of the article
There is no set formula, but of these three things, the title tags are arguably the most important. That title tag is very critical to the search engines matching your page to the people looking for it. If someone types in “definition of topic123“, and those words are all in your page’s title, then it’s a no-brainer – Google knows exactly where to send that reader.
You don’t have to follow these recommendations, of course: If you write enjoyably, then you’ll get traffic regardless of how your page is designed. But setting correct title tags does help. A lot.
Here is a short article with a few other SEO recommendations. A lot of it is written for the web designer, but some is still helpful for the writer.
