SEO 101: Introducing the Title Tag

Arguably the most important on-page element when it comes to SEO optimization, the title tag is a crucial bit of meta information that you (or the search bots) can’t afford to neglect.

A bit of background on the title tag:

1. Describes the page content – Conveys to the user and search bot exactly what this page is about.
2. Influences (along with the content of your page + other elements) page relevancy.
3. Shows up in three important places – Search results page, browser, social media and browser favorites/bookmarks

Page relevancy is essentially the search engine’s way of determining how relevant the content on a particular page is to what users are searching for. So being hyper relevant requires using appropriate, relevant keywords in not only the title tag of each page, but the content and other elements as well.

As you can see in the examples below, the title tag “Search Marketing – South Central Media” appears both in the browser bar when visiting that particular page, in addition to the clickable link displayed in the search results page on Google.

Remember, the lack of page relevancy will only hurt rankings in both the short and long term. More on best practices for title tags to come.