Crafting Your Page Titles for SEO

Photo by Faeryan

You’ve heard the saying – you can’t judge a book by its cover, right? I’m guilty of this. At bookstores, you can find me with my head cocked sideways, walking up and down the aisles. I’ll skim over the titles of the books, picking out the ones that sound interesting. If the title doesn’t catch my eye, I’m on to the next one.

The thing is, I’m probably missing out on some great books. If only they author took a little more time to craft an attention-grabbing title. It is, after all, the first thing people see.

By now you’re probably asking, “what the heck do book titles have to do with SEO?”

SEO = Search Engine Optimization. The process of optimizing your website to rank higher in the search engines for certain keyword phrases, in an effort to get more visitors.

When it comes to SEO, there are on-site factors (changes you can make to your site) and off-site factors (other sites linking to you). Of the on-site factors, changing your pages’ title tags often have the most impact in how high you rank and for which keywords.

I know what you’re thinking. You’re opening up your website editor right now to change your title tag to “Wedding Photographer, Wedding Photographers, Wedding Photography – The Best Wedding Photographers and Wedding Photography.”

Hold on there Chief. That’s called keywords stuffing. Bad mojo.

Forget about the search engines for a second and think about the people browsing your title, which is right next to a bunch of other titles. Put yourself in their shoes – if you were looking for a wedding photographer, and saw the following titles:

Wedding Photographer, Wedding Photographers, & Wedding Photography – The Best Wedding Photographers and Wedding Photography

and

Los Angeles Wedding Photography | Studio XYZ

Which would you click on? (Pretend you live in Los Angeles, OK?) It doesn’t matter of you rank #1 if everybody is clicking on #2, and the title has a lot to do with that.

With that in mind, use your title tag to grab your potential client’s attention. If they’re searching for wedding photographers online, chances are very good that they’re starting at Google (or Yahoo or Bing) and typing in [wedding]+[photographer OR photographers OR photography]+[location] – not necessarily in that order. For example, people will type “wedding photography Los Angeles” or “Los Angeles wedding photographers” or “LA wedding photographer” or “wedding photographers 90210.”

If they’re searching for Los Angeles wedding photography, and they see your title tag that includes the terms “Los Angeles Wedding Photography” you’ve got their attention. Love at first site.

So now that you’re ready to craft your title tags, here are a couple things to keep in mind:

  • Most search engines will cut off your title tag after 67 characters (including spaces), so be succinct.
  • If someone searches for “wedding photography” (without the quotes) and you have those words in your title tag, they will appear in bold (calling attention to your listing).
  • Don’t stuff keywords into your title tag. It doesn’t work – the search engines figured this one out a long time ago.
  • Have someone else (lots of someone elses) read your title tag and ask them if it sounds natural. Would they click on it?
  • Should you use your studio’s name in the title tag? In most cases, I recommend using it at the end. This keeps your keywords as close to the beginning of the title as possible (a good thing), while at the same time increasing brand awareness.
  • Every page on your site should have a different title tag that is unique to that page
  • Rule of thumb: describe the content of each web page in a single sentance. That’s your title tag.
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