Small Business Websites

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A page’s title is located in the blue (usually) bar at the top of your screen. For example, the title bar on this page says “Small Business Websites >> Blog Archive >> What Can a Page Title Do For My Business?” Page titles are the single most important thing in optimizing your site for search engines. The term ’site optimization’ simply means doing all the little tricks and tips necessary to help your site rank high in search engine searches. While there are a lot of other things to consider in optimizing your site as well, right now we’re going to focus strictly on the title.

When a search engine comes to your site, it literally searches your page titles, text and numerous other elements. If you don’t have a page title, you’ve just decreased your search engine ranking. From a search engine’s point of view, the page title is the first step in gathering information about the page. A page’s title will also show up in the results of a search. If it isn’t accurate enough to show people this is the site they need for the info they want, they won’t click on it and will move on down the list, never visiting your site.

I’ve seen many, many pages on the internet that have a title of “Untitled Document.” This is the default when creating a page and if not changed, a major blow to your business.

There are several things to keep in mind when creating a successful page title:

• Use your keywords or key phrases. Yes, the name of your company is important, but don’t just put Bob’s Restaurant. Include key words about the restaurant. Do you serve steak, seafood, Italian, what?
• If you have a particularly important keyword, repeat it. If you sell BBQ, mention it twice. More than that might penalize you.
• What is your location? If I’m searching for BBQ restaurants in Denver, CO, I’ll probably put in something like “Denver BBQ restaurants”. If your business is located in Denver, but doesn’t have Denver as a keyword, you’ll be much further down the list than the restaurants with Denver in their keywords. For companies that can do business anywhere, location is not so important.
• Use different titles for every page to reflect its content. Don’t use the same title for every page on your site. Take advantage of the power of titles and make sure each page has a different one.
• Google allows about 67 characters in a title and other search engines are similar. Always use this full amount without going over. Anything over the limit will not be read and is just wasted. Anything under the limit isn’t taking advantage of the space and opportunity.

A good page title might read “Bob’s BBQ Restaurant | BBQ chicken, steaks, ribs, fish | Denver, CO”.
Note: Somewhere on your website, BBQ should also be spelled out as barbecue. Not everyone searches the same words and you don’t want to miss potential customers.

A page title can always be changed, so if you’re not getting the results you want, try something new. But always make sure every page on your site has a complete and accurate title with your keywords or key phrases.

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