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Search engines like Google display search results based on many factors. One of the most important on-page factors Google looks at is the page title meta-tag.

Now, this sounds kind of complicated – but it’s actually quite simple.

What surprises me is how many web sites don’t use them properly – or at all.

Let me explain:

Whenever you open up Internet Explorer or Firefox, or whatever browser you might use – at the very top of the open window, there is a dark blue bar with some text extending all the way across the top.

That’s the title bar – and there’s one on every open browser window or tab. And when you minimize a window to the bottom, the text in the title bar is what you see.

Now…the important thing to know about them is the words used in them are looked at by Google when someone does a search. It’s probably the most important copy on the page, even though it’s not really on the actual web page.

It’s a meta-tag that can be easily edited for each page on your site.

The best use of it is to include your most important keyword phrase, making sure it’s completely relevant to the content of that page, and that clearly communicates the contents of the page to your visitors.

In fact, when you do a Google search, you’ll see that the clickable link for each result is the page title for each result.

Try to keep it less than 70 total characters. Different search engines and different browsers only display a certain number of characters.

Also make sure each page has a unique title conveying the purpose of that particular page.

There’s different ways to create the title tag, depending on your web site programming, the template, or even if you have a blog site, but it’s generally very easy to do, and if you don’t take the extra few minutes to create a compelling title to your pages to get higher search placement, then you’ll have squandered a free way to help yourself rank higher in organic search.

Next week, I’m going to talk about another very important on-page SEO factor many people don’t take full advantage of.

I’d love to hear your comments about this. To get more information about SEO, the benefits of powerful copy, about this post, web/online advice, or about my direct response web copywriting services, e-mail me or call me at 603-686-5140.

And if you need offline direct response marketing copy and advice, go to www.crestviewmarketing.com

To your website’s success!

Merrill Clark
Website and Marketing Copywriter
Crestview Marketing Services LLC