The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) has determined that the outside length of a
page title should be no more than 64 characters. Search engines will vary in the size of
title that’s indexed. Using 64 characters or less is an accepted practice, however, that still leaves your
page titles cut off in search engines that only index up to 40 or 50 characters. For this reason, staying
at or below the 40-character length is a smarter strategy within your SEO efforts. Don’t repeat keywords in your title tags. Repetition can occasionally come across as spam
when a crawler is examining your site, so avoid repeating keywords in your title if possible,
and never duplicate words just to gain a crawler’s attention. It could well get your site
excluded from search engine listings.
Consider adding special characters at the beginning and end of your title to improve
noticeability. Parentheses (()), arrows (<<>>), asterisks (****), and special symbols like
££££ can help draw a user’s attention to your page title. These special characters and
symbols don’t usually add to or distract from your SEO efforts, but they do serve to call
attention to your site title.
Include a call to action in your title. There’s an adage that goes something like, “You’ll
never sell a thing if you don’t ask for the sale.” That’s one thing that doesn’t change with
the Web. Even on the Internet, if you want your users to do something you have to ask
them to.All your page titles should be indicated with the title tag when coding your web site. The title tag
isn’t difficult to use. Here’s an example of such a tag:<title>A Descriptive Web Site Title</title>If your page titles aren’t tagged properly, you might as well not be using those titles, so take the
time to ensure that your page titles are short, descriptive, and tagged into your web-site code. By
using title tags, you’re increasing the possibility that your web site will be ranked high within search
engine results.Creating great content
Web-site content is another element of an SEO-friendly site that you should spend plenty of time
contemplating and completing. Fortunately, there are some ways to create web-site content that will
make search crawlers love you.Great content starts with the right keywords and phrases. Select no more than three keywords or
phrases to include in the content on any one of your web pages. But why only three? Wouldn’t
more keywords and phrases ensure that search engines take notice of your site?When you use too many keywords in your content, you face two problems. The first is that the effec-
tiveness of your keywords will be reduced by the number of different ones you’re using. Choose two
or three for each page of your site and stick with those.TIPTIP
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