Meta Tags can be so confusing when tending to your website’s SEO. So I thought I’d give a few tips on writing your site’s Title Tag. You might think that would be the easiest one, because most people put their business name as their Title Tag. But that’s actually, in most cases, the least beneficial thing you can do as far as SEO is concerned.

Title Tags are not meant to be your business name or title; they are meant to attract the search engines, and also potential customers. And in a lot of cases, your business name has very little SEO appeal. For example, let’s say you sell used books, and say your business name is Between the Shelves. That doesn’t exactly tell Google or potential customers what you sell. And in fact, since the first word of your Title Tag has the most relevance and most importance for Google, the word ‘Between’ is really a poor choice as the first word for your Title Tag. And as a result, your Title Tag would rank much lower than other used book websites, especially if they have the word, ‘Books’ as their first Title Tag word. So they are going to appear higher up in the SERP’s (Search Engine Results Pages) and will likely get the website traffic that you want!

Your Title Tag’s first word should have the most importance and relevance to what you sell in your store. So, if books are what you sell, then the obvious choice for the first word in your Title Tag should be ‘books.’ That’s probably one of, if not THE first keyword for your website too, so all the better if it’s the first in your website’s Title Tag.

And speaking of keywords, which are good to have in your Title Tag, don’t make the mistake of cramming your Title Tag full of too many keywords; or worse yet, an endless string of them. Google (or any SE) doesn’t like that and considers it spamming. The Title Tag should probably have only one or two keywords, so make them count and choose your most important one or two (at the most).

Then you also need to say something something else in your title, as briefly as possible, to get Google’s and searchers’ attention. You have 63-70 characters (which includes spaces) to get the attention of anyone who sees your website in the SERP’s. That is all that will display of your Title Tag. So you have to make those characters count. So the goal is always to get an important, relevant keyword at the front of the tag, followed by some important info about your store or service, that will grab the reader’s attention and make them choose your store’s link as the one they click on and visit from those results.

Using our used bookstore as an example, here’s an option.

Books – Used and New with the best prices Between the Shelves.

I managed to work in the business name at the end of that Title Tag example, which isn’t even necessary. But I liked the way it sounded. And it comes in at 62 characters, which is right where I want it to be to have the full Title Tag displayed. It gives you an idea too of how you can still work in the name, if you like, while keeping the important keyword at the front of the Tag…and still making it inviting to anyone searching for used books on Google and finding your link in the results.

So to sum it all up, here’s what you need for an effective Title Tag when creating your website’s Meta Tags:

• A relevant, important keyword at the front of the tag.

• One or two keywords, at most.

• Some important, inviting information about your store or service.

• Less than 70 characters, including spaces (63 should be your target number).

I hope this helps you master the art of writing a good Title Tag for your website. Meta Tags can be confusing, but with time, research, and a lot of patience, you can get your website’s SEO exactly where it needs to be.

Basically, a Google Page Rank is the numeric value assigned to a web page (1-10), based in large part on the quality and number of backlinks pointing to particular page. In other words, when another person puts a link to your website on their website, they’re creating a backlink (a link back) to your website, and that, in essence, counts as a “vote” for your site on Google.

However, it’s important to note that it’s not the quantity of backlinks that is most important to Google. Rather, it’s the quality and relevance of the backlink that really matters. In order for a backlink to help your site earn a “vote,” it must be coming from a website that has content that is relevant to your own. So say for example that you sell dolls and stitcheries on your site, and there is a website selling beauty products that has added a link on their site to yours. That backlink will not help you with Google, because the content of each website is totally different (i.e. irrelevant).

It’s also important to be aware that when you link to other sites, the relevance rule applies even more. If you link to a site with irrelevant content…and worse yet, one that has a low page rank itself, it can penalize your site with Google for doing so. And these are reasons why we need to care about our page ranks…because they can penalize our websites, which can cause lower results for our sites in the SERP’s (Search Engine Results Pages).

There are other things that factor into Google’s Page Rank system, and you can find lots of information about that on the web. But Google doesn’t ever reveal ALL of its exact or specific criterion for determining page ranks. We know some things, as mentioned, but we can’t know all. But it’s good to pay attention to the factors that we do know about and can control, so that we can achieve the best page rank possible on each of our website’s pages.