Optimizing Title tags for ranking and branding

The undisputed headliner of the Head section is the Title tag. Although the various search engines out there don't tell us how important any one element is in their algorithms, most industry experts agree that the Title tag is one of the most critical. Because the Title tag not only shows up in your browser window but also in the search engine results, it's easy to infer that this tag naturally has some impact in the search engine's ranking algorithms. The following code (and Figure 4-1) shows you how a Title tag appears in HTML.

<title>Good Titles Use Keywords like Ford Mustang 1967 specs</title>

Getting this tag right has many benefits — increased ranking, branding, and click-throughs. Getting it wrong severely hinders your page’s chances at ranking in the search engine — Title tags that appear on more than one page across a website (duplicate Title tags) are considered by search engines to be a signal of a low-value page and are filtered. Meanwhile, poorly written Title tags won't garner click-throughs or serve branding. Leaving out the keywords hurts your chances to rank for those words.

The Title tag, although short, tells the search engine what your page is about. The maximum number of characters allotted for the Title tag is approximately 45–70 characters, depending on character width. (Character width matters here because the Title tag length is actually based on a maximum width of 512 pixels, not an exact number of characters. Because each character has its own pixel width, the Title tag recommendation can’t be based on an exact number of characters.) You have just a few words to inform, entice, and reinforce your brand to search engines and their users. In order to get your message through, you need to be specific with keywords. Entice searchers with calls to action and use “research” words like how to and information. Figure 4-1, shown previously, displays a Title tag as seen in Google's search engine results pages.

So what do you do about this short, yet critically important, piece of content? In order to maximize the effectiveness of your Title tag, you need to make some solid decisions first:

• Focus: Your page must have a single explicit subject. Put keywords related to that focus in the Title.
• Silo: Your page must support the theme of the page above that page, and it must be supported by the pages that link below that page. Theme-level keywords should appear in the Title.
• Branding: Some pages are critical to support branding; others are not. If branding is an issue, include branded keywords in the Title.

After you decide on your focus, theme, and brand emphasis, you’re ready to start writing your tag. Even though the actual length of your Title tag varies depending on your industry standard, you can follow some basic guidelines to get started. The two most important terms to remember are unique and keyword-rich. You need to make sure that you're writing unique, keyword-rich titles for your pages. The title of your page should belong only to that page, and it should not be used anywhere else on your site. If you're following your focus, theme, and branding guidelines (see Book II, Chapter 4 for more on themes and siloing), you should already be using words in a combination that won't be repeated somewhere else. Your title should not be sensational or contain keywords that you don't expect to rank for. Be sure that you have only one Title tag per page. Duplicate Title tags are a severe issue that could lead to filtering of your pages by the search engines, denying them the ability to rank for key terms.

Your title should be fairly short. Google usually cuts your title off before 70 characters, so you need to get your message out right up front. Although Google indexes the whole tag, you want users to see your relevance immediately.

Put the keywords up front, and make them enticing for people to click through. Notice that in Figure 4-1, shown previously, the words search engine optimization and SEO are bolded wherever they appear in the Title tag. This is because Google sometimes bolds search query words, and query concept synonyms, that appear in the title, which may lead to higher click-throughs. Eye-tracking studies have shown that people are naturally drawn to boldfaced type. (Learn more about how Google connects information about various people, places, and things to generate concept synonyms in the Knowledge Graph portion of Book I, Chapter 3.)

If you’re working to establish your brand, put your company name at the end, unless your brand name is a main keyword in your SEO strategy.

Be aware that there is a difference between being keyword-rich and being spammy. Spam by excessive repetition of keywords only hurts your Title tag. Always strive to play within the acceptable boundaries when it comes to SEO. The margin of safety changes all the time and without any warning at all.

Writing a Meta description

Working your way through the tags in a typical Head section, the next stop is the Meta description tag. Search engines use the Meta description tag to create the snippets you see beneath the page title in their results, so this is an important tag to get right. Write your Meta description like a sentence, describing what visitors can expect to find on the page after they click through from the search engine. If you fail to provide a Meta description, search engines often select text off the page that may or may not be a good representation of your page's real value. It is in your best interest to craft a unique, targeted Meta description tag for every page. The following code displays a sample Meta description tag as it would appear in the raw HTML of a web page:

<meta name="description" content="Your description tag should use keywords, describe the theme and purpose of the page, and be fairly short. It is structured as a sentence.">

The Meta description should be about twice as long as your Title tag. Like the title, words used in the search query that are also found in the description may be bolded, giving your listing another opportunity to catch the eye of the searcher. Google displays approximately 160 characters for the description, sometimes extracted from the page content. If the Meta description is used for search engine results, you must put your best information right up front. No one but the spider sees it if you don't. Figure 4-2 shows a Meta description tag appearing in Google's search results.

Your description should answer the question, “What is this page about?” Try not to repeat any word more than twice; any more than that may look unnatural to users and to the engines. Ask yourself what your target audience would be looking for when searching for what your web page offers, and write your metadata to address that person. Notice in Figure 4-2, shown previously, that descriptions are in sentence form and give you a very clear idea about the content on the linked page.

Like your Title tag, your Meta description tag must be unique; that is, it has to be unlike any other tag on your site and targeted to the content of the page it’s on. If you repeat text in a tag, you run the risk of the search engines identifying the page as duplicate content (that is, content that appears elsewhere on your site or the web). Duplicate content is commonly filtered out of the search results by the engines because it’s not in their users’ best interest to show the same or similar pages more than once. Even if everything else on your page is unique and useful, a duplicate tag in the Head section can spell disaster for your rankings. Think of your metadata as the advertisement and the content as your product. Don't be guilty of false advertising!

Writing a useful Meta keywords tag

In the past, it used to be simple (well, okay, easier) to get ranked in the search engines. Use your keywords in the page's metadata (including Title and Meta description tags, as well as the keywords tag) and throughout the displayed body of the page, and within days or even hours, you could be on the top of any search engine you liked: Infoseek, AltaVista, Excite, or Yahoo. But times have changed, and search engines have developed algorithms that are much more sophisticated, containing many more variables. The Meta keywords tag, which is basically a place to list all the relevant keywords for your page, is very easy to abuse because it's not a user-visible tag and invites keyword stuffing — putting every word, not just relevant ones, into the content of the tag. As a result, the Meta keywords tag suffered a serious devaluation. To be frank, you are never, ever going to rank on the basis of your Meta keywords tag for any competitive term.

So why still use it? Although some engines claim that they don’t even bother to index the Meta keywords tag, some still read and store it in the data portion. Although the Meta keywords tag is not a major factor in rankings, it’s still better to sweat the small stuff and do everything right from the get-go. You can create a Meta keywords tag in only a few minutes, and search engines don’t penalize you for having a Meta keywords tag on a page (unless you spam by keyword stuffing the tag). You can never go wrong by using a Meta keywords tag, and you only hurt yourself if you don’t use this valid piece of HTML data. The following code shows you how to format a Meta keywords tag in HTML:

<meta name="keywords" content="First Keyword Phrase, Second Keyword Phrase, Repeated Keyword, Keyword">

Optimizing a Meta keywords tag is simple. Essentially, the only thing this tag requires is that you list all the keywords and keyword phrases that are important to your page. A general rule is that if a keyword was important enough to be included in your title and Meta description, it’s important enough to include in your keywords tag. As a best practice, order your keyword phrases from longest to shortest (four-word phrases, and then three-word phrases, and then two-word phrases, and so on). This keeps you organized and gives the search engines the most targeted and usually the most valuable words right up front.

Don’t go overboard. Remember, excessive repetition could be considered spam. Try not to repeat any single keyword more than four times in the Meta keywords tag. If you stick to a keywords tag approximately twice the length of your Meta description tag, you’re playing on safe ground.

Headings

Within the Body section, the heading acts like the headline of a newspaper, identifying the topic of sections or paragraphs of a web page. As such, it plays an important role for search engines looking to classify the subject matter of the page. Because of this, search engines give heading text significant weight in their ranking algorithms; thus, it’s very important that you optimize headings in line with your ranking goals.

As with a table of contents or outline, the heading is usually made up of short phrases, generally not complete sentences. Within the page, there are often sub-sections with their own subheading tag designations. Hence, an H1 tag may be followed by H2 tags. Figure 4-3 displays an H1 heading tag used in content.

When you’re writing an H1 tag, you must include the most important keywords of that web page, which are likely to be the keywords also used in the Title and Meta tags. When seen together with the other keyword-optimized page elements discussed in the following sections, all of your page's significant text works together to support the spiders' recognition of your keywords as your site's area of expertise. For this reason, we recommend that you always use at least one H# tag on every page of your site. You can use multiple headings as needed, but they should always be used in hierarchical order. An H1 tag is given more weight than an H2 tag. It's rare that there would be more than one H1 on a page because pages generally only have one major subject. (There are exceptions to this rule; for example, we have multiple H1 tags on our homepage at www.bruceclay.com because we have a very long page that is defining multiple top-level topics.)

All other subjects naturally fall below that top-level listing. Following an H1 tag, the next heading on the page can be represented by the H2 tag. In other words, heading tags should not be used out of order. The H1 tag should be followed by the H2 tag, which can be followed by the H3 tag, if needed.

Don’t use excessive headings: Too many can actually dilute the theme of your page. Think of this structure as a table of contents, and you can’t go wrong.

Each heading throughout the page should be unique. Because the purpose of the heading is to summarize the unique content of the page or section, each heading should naturally be unique as well. However, the content within a heading tag should be similar to the content in the Title tag because both share the task of summarizing the page content and including significant page keywords.

Try to keep headings from being too long. Because they are serving as a headline for the page, headings must be concise and to the point. Notice that the heading in Figure 4-3 acts as more of a title describing the subject of the page. A heading should usually be only a few targeted words and never more than a single sentence. Including an entire paragraph in a heading tag would likely be considered spam by the search engines. Here are a few points to remember about headings:

• Use heading tags as a headline for your page.

• Use heading tags in hierarchical order, following an H1 with an H2, an H2 with an H3, and so on.
• Keep headings short and unique.
• Don't use headings for styling text. Use CSS instead. For more on CSS, check out HTML5 and CSS3 All-in-One For Dummies, 3rd Edition, by Andy Harris (John Wiley & Sons, Inc.).

Content

Search marketers often say that content is king. Regardless of its relationship to royalty, tests show that content weighs heavily in search engine rankings. Although search engines are rapidly developing the capabilities to index other types of media, in most cases, you're dealing with a search engine spider that is deaf, dumb, and blind. Thus far, spiders cannot see images, watch videos, listen to podcasts, fill out forms, or use any other advanced features of your website, although they can detect that those engagement objects are present, and they’re expanding their ability to index that content. For this reason, it's imperative that you have enough sentence-structured text content on your page for a search engine to adequately determine what your page is about. The amount of content necessary to be competitive varies by industry, but the trend is that the amount of content has steadily increased over time for all industries. Discover how much content is right for your industry by doing competitive research (as described in Book II, Chapter 1).

If you’re just starting out and haven’t done competitive research, plan for a minimum of 450 or more words of good, relevant, useful text content on your important pages. Your content should always be unique to the page it's on and should naturally incorporate the keywords found in your title, description, and headings. The reason for this is simple: The first three tags define what the page is about; therefore, it is only logical that those words are repeated again in the text content on your site. Don’t fall into the trap of discussing something without ever naming what it is or relying on the images on the page to provide context. Remember that the search engines aren't able to look at the picture and understand what you’re talking about. If your page is about Ford Mustangs, you need more than a picture of the car to let the search engines know that. Say what you mean.

Use synonyms and related words in order to reinforce your keywords. When discussing shoes, you should also be using words that help define what sort of shoes. Are the related words heel, leather, instep, size, and designer? Or are they horse, anvil, iron, and mare? You can see that many very different mental pictures are painted by placing the keyword shoes in context.

There’s practically no maximum number of words you can put on a page: A search engine just keeps reading. (Your visitors might not, though! If you don’t have anything interesting to say, stop talking.) You should have all the words discuss the same subject matter for SEO, but long pages are not frowned upon by search engines. There used to be upper limits on how large of a page the search engines would index, but those limits have gone out the window. (Note, however, that page speed — how fast your page renders in a browser — is a factor, and page sizes affect that speed. We discuss this in greater depth in Book VII, Chapter 1.)

And although the search engines might be happy to read your 50,000-word opus, keep user fatigue in mind. If you find yourself discussing several topics on a very long page, consider breaking that discussion up into multiple pages. This adds depth to your site by expanding the number of pages you have on a keyword phrase and also allows you to manage the site’s themes.

When it comes to formatting the text on your page, remember, people tend to scan text on the Internet. Keep paragraphs short and direct. Give the facts as concisely as possible. Customers don’t want to spend a long time reading if the web page isn't going to satisfy their requirements. Tell your customers who you are, what your product is, and why they should choose you over your competitors. Use lists, as well as bold and italicized text, to direct your visitors’ eyes to important words and concepts. Bulleted lists are ideal for product pages, which users scan to pick up important information.

If you are writing content for your own website, your first response might be to feel frustrated. What on earth are you going to write about? Everyone knows everything that you could possibly tell her, and you’re not a writer anyway. But that’s just the thing: People don’t know everything, and you are an expert on the topic even if you’re not the world's best writer.

For most people, the hardest part of adding content to their websites is the writing of the content in the first place, but it doesn't have to be. There are lots of themes for you to write on and many topics available for you to write about. For e-commerce sites, this might include a well-written product description, user reviews, tips and tricks, or the inclusion of some frequently asked questions.

Remember that many people on the web are there to do research. You should address the concerns that your visitors may have and give them a reason to buy whatever you are selling (literally or figuratively). Search engines look for research words, like how to and tips, as markers that indicate that page will satisfy a user doing research.

Suppose, for example, that you’re in the business of selling cowboy boots. You are an expert in your area. Brainstorm everything you can think of that relates to cowboy boots, even if it’s only somewhat related. After you have all your ideas down, pick a few of the best. For example, you probably want to focus a section of your site on the keywords [buy cowboy boots]. Everyone, you think, knows about how to buy boots. It’s just a matter of finding the right fit and style. You don’t need to explain how to buy cowboy boots to your site’s visitors. But it’s one of your keywords, so you sit down and write all the obvious information.

Of course, you know how to check the fit of your boots and which styles work best for which people. It’s obvious to you that your jeans should be tucked inside your boots if you’re working outside and that you should take certain steps to care for your boots.

But most people don't know these things. That’s why they’re coming to your site in the first place. Your expertise is a valuable resource for the development of content. Explaining something that is obvious to you is probably the best way to introduce new customers to your products. If a visitor who is an expert comes into your site, having correct and informative content reinforces to him or her that your site is worthwhile.

Write your first draft with the page’s keywords in mind. Use your keywords as a guide for the content. Tape them to the side of your monitor or put them at the very top of the document so they’re on your mind as you write. Don’t worry about keyword densities or forcing the words in. If it doesn’t sound natural to use the keyword, don't use it. The first draft is just to get the information out.

Take a look at the tone of your piece:

• Match your audience. Are you writing to the right audience? Baby boomers and teenagers have very different ways of expressing themselves, not to mention widely different cultural touchstones, and writing the same way to each of them is probably not going to work. You have to speak their language.
• Engage the reader. Your content should get users involved and offer them ways to connect to the material.
• Solve a problem. Does your content solve a problem or help the customer make a decision? Fighting fear, doubt, and uncertainty increases your conversions as visitors learn to trust you.
• Educate. If your website deals with a highly technical area that your customers probably don’t know enough about to ask intelligent questions, have you educated them enough to feel comfortable in making their decision?

Revise your draft with these ideas in mind. Knowing your audience means putting in the kinds of words that they will be looking for: the same kinds of words that help them understand what the best choice of products is for them.

After your next draft, ask someone else to read it over for you. The best person for this task is someone who fits the profile of a site visitor. Have that person read it aloud to see if it is easily readable and answers his or her questions in an easy to understand way. If not, revise the content to meet that person’s understanding. You might even find that you're going to need another page of content in order to answer the questions.

After you have a final draft, incorporate your final product into the destination page, and use a page-rating tool to determine the validity and strength of the document. Tweak it if necessary. Keep in mind how the content supports the website theme as a whole. This ties into the linking strategies discussed throughout Book VI.

The final thing to remember about writing for search engines is that there is no magical formula for writing the perfect copy. You’re going to have to put in hard work and pay attention to detail to meet the needs of both the search engines and your human visitors. Start writing and go from there.