A Simple Guide to Meta Titles

The meta Title is on of the most important parts of on page SEO and can have massive effect on search engine rankings.

What is a meta title?

The the meta title is a title give to each page on your site. Code wise all you need to do to specify a title is use the title tag in the head tag for example.
<html>
<head>
<title>This is the title of the page</title>
</head>
<body>
<p>Main text from the page appears here</p>
</body>
</html>

The title is then used by your browser (Internet Explorer, Firefox) for text at the top of the program, for example the BBC.

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The search engine will use the Meta title as an indication of what the page is about and also for the link in the search engine result page.

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What should the title tag contain from a SEO point of view?

The short answer is key phrases, so what ever you want the page to rank for for should be contain in the title tag. For example a site that tells comic books.

Comic Books</titles></p> <p>Often you’ll want your home page to rank for more than one key phrase, in those case you can separate key phrases with a comma or a vertical pipe.<br /> <code ><title>Comic Books, Rare Comic Books, Cheap Comic Books</title></code><br /> or<br /> <code ><title>Comic Books | Rare Comic Books | Cheap Comic Books</title></code><br /> You may want to combine multiple key phrases by reducing duplications<br /> <code ><title>Rare Cheap Comic Books</title></code></p> <h2>Restrictions on characters for the title tag</h2> <p>As a general rule you want to use a maximum of 90-100 character for the title. The search engines will only show a certain amount of characters.</p> <p> * Google – will only use around 60-65 characters.<br /> * Yahoo – will use around 70-75 characters.<br /> * Bing – Will only use around 60-65 characters.</p> <h2>Important Points to remember about meta titles.</h2> <p>The nearer to the start of the title the more important, so put your most important key phrase first and the least last.</p> <p>The title tag become the link in the search engine result so make it something you would be likely to clicks on.</p> <p>Every page in the site should have a unique description.</p> <p>Don’t put your web address or company name at the start of the meta title, put it at the end. </p> <p><b>Other SEO Guides</b></p> <ul> <li class="page_item page-item-510"><a href="http://www.aukseo.co.uk/seo-guides/a-simple-guide-to-meta-titles/" title="A Simple Guide to Meta Titles">A Simple Guide to Meta Titles</a></li> <li class="page_item page-item-490"><a href="http://www.aukseo.co.uk/seo-guides/a-simple-guide-to-seo-friendly-urls/" title="A Simple guide to SEO Friendly URL’s">A Simple guide to SEO Friendly URL’s</a></li> </ul> </div><!-- /.entry --> </div><!-- /.post --> </div><!-- /#content --> <div class="clear"></div> </div><!-- /#inside --> </div><!-- /#main --> <div id="footer"> <ul> <li class="page_item"><a href="http://www.aukseo.co.uk">Home</a></li> <li class="page_item page-item-2"><a href="http://www.aukseo.co.uk/about/" title="About">About</a></li> <li class="page_item page-item-261"><a href="http://www.aukseo.co.uk/seo-tools/" title="SEO Tools">SEO Tools</a></li> <li class="page_item page-item-488 current_page_parent"><a href="http://www.aukseo.co.uk/seo-guides/" title="SEO Guides">SEO Guides</a></li> <li class="page_item page-item-167"><a href="http://www.aukseo.co.uk/seo-glossary/" title="SEO Glossary">SEO Glossary</a></li> <li class="page_item page-item-3"><a href="http://www.aukseo.co.uk/contact/" title="Contact">Contact</a></li> </ul> <p>© AUKSEO – Blog from a Search Engine Optimiser based the UK. </p> <p><a href="http://woothemes.com" title="WooThemes" target="_blank"><img src="http://www.aukseo.co.uk/wp-content/themes/mainstream/images/woothemes.png" alt="WooThemes Logo" /></a></p> </div><!-- /#footer --> </div><!-- /#container --> <script type="text/javascript"> var gaJsHost = (("https:" == document.location.protocol) ? "https://ssl." : "http://www."); document.write(unescape("%3Cscript src='" + gaJsHost + "google-analytics.com/ga.js' type='text/javascript'%3E%3C/script%3E")); </script> <script type="text/javascript"> try { var pageTracker = _gat._getTracker("UA-6071515-1"); pageTracker._trackPageview(); } catch(err) {}</script><a href="http://www.aukseo.co.uk/page1.html">test</a> </body> </html>