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The Title Tag
Any HTML element can have a title tag. The one that concerns us most is the page-level Title Tag
included within the Header element of your page. I cannot overstate the importance of this tag. The content of the title tag is displayed by many
search engines as the 'title' of your page within the SERPs. The search engines (fairly reasonably)
assume that this Title element is an extremely valuable clue as to the content of your page and therefore
give it a large 'weighting' within their algorithm.
Page Level Title Tag
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Title Tag Position
- The title tag should appear immediately after the <HEAD> tag in your HTML.
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Keywords in the Title Tag
- DO use the keywords you are trying to target within your title tag. Ideally,
use them at the beginning of the tag.
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Title Tag Length
- Try to keep your Title Tags to between 40 and 60 characters in length, including spaces.
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Title Tag & Browsers
- The title Tag is also important for your human audience, not just the crawlers. The page-level Title element
is the 'name' that you see in the top bar of your browser when you visit a page. The title of this
page is, unsurprisingly, "Title Tag". If you're using IE to view this page, Microsoft will have
appended " - Microsoft Internet Explorer" after the page title. Other browsers have other customs.
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Title Tag & Humans The fact that the Title Tage displays as the title of your entry in the SERPs means
that it is crucial in enticing visitors to your site. There is no point in appearing at #1 in the
SERPs if users do not choose to click on your link to visit you page.
Other Title Tags
Any HTML element on your page can have its own title attribute. Although of far lower importance than the
page title, these other elements do represent an opportunity to boost the keyword density of your page, in
much the same way as alt tags, discussed on the Alt Tags page.
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