What’s in a Title?

Any SEO expert worth his salt will tell you that the title tag title (don’t neglect me title) is one of the most important tags for seo, and yet the most neglected.

While explaining to a client about rich targeted keywords, traffic generating blogs, rss feeds, article submissions, link building and directory building, social networking and social bookmarking, wiki’s, youtube, adwords and other such popular SEO’s big guns, one tends to ignore explaining in detail about the little meta tag called title. So just how important is this title tag?

Ask a journalist about the title aka headline and he will tell you it’s the most difficult part of writing a story for it can make the difference whether the story one so painfully wrote amidst the hills of Afghanistan, is read by the reader or not. If the headline does not trigger the reader within 2 seconds of reading it, they can choose to skip to a better story. It’s not that the reader would not have found the story itself interesting, it’s just there is an overload of information out there, and just 24 hours in a day, so it’s up to the journalist to captivate the reader with his headline. At the end of the day, no journalist wants to wind up having his mum and close related family as his only audience.

How does this story translate when it comes to understanding the significance of the title when used in the virtual online world? In an online scenario a visitor enters his keyword phrase in the search engines text box for e.g. the user types in Seo expert in mumbai hoping to find a suitable seo expert in mumbai.

Let us assume that using brilliant seo techniques, a seo expert, say like me, ensures that my website’s link www.seo-optimization-experts.com comes up in the first three listing in a Google search. Now that quite an achievement, but before I can give myself a pat on the back, I have to see if the user is actually clicking on my websites’ link or not? If SEO opens the door, it’s the title tag what invites the visitor to come in to check out the goods.

What conveniences a visitor to click on a website of a seo expert in mumbai who is listed on the 5 th place rather than a seo expert in mumbai who is listed #2 or #3 place. To understand this you have to understand the visitor’s mind when it comes to choosing a link they feel would satisfy their need of finding a seo expert in mumbai.

Honestly there is no good way to find out what the visitor is thinking (probably about this bad ratings due to lack of a good seo expert) when they choose a link over another, but we have to do our best to find new and innovative ways to entice the visitor to click on your link, and not your competitors.

The title tag is what the visitor sees in the search engines results page for e.g.
When you search for seo content services in india on Google, you will find www.seo-optimization-experts.com raked # 1.

Now what do you see on the search results page.

SEO content service in India at affordable rates! (This is my title tag)

SEO content services India, is a team dedicated to delivering high traffic to your Web site? We, at SEO Expert India, offer SEO content writing services which keep both your customers, and search engines happy. (This is the description tag)

So would the above title and description convenience you to click to my website. I would like to hope so.

Notice how I mentioned affordable (people always like the price feel good factor) in both the title and description. Like price, time is also a good factor to include in title wherever applicable e.g. SEO content services 24 hour delivery. Asking the visitor a question in the title or description can entice the visitor to action as well, as in the modified example below:

e.g. Do you need affordable seo content services in India? We, at SEO Expert India, offer SEO content writing services which keep both your customers, and search engines happy.

I have ensured the keyword “seo content services in India” is present in the front and if possible again somewhere close to the end, in both the title tag and the description tag so that keeps the search engine happy.

Be creative! A title tag should build curiosity, educate, offer value, put forth a question, or grab your visitor’s attention in any way. After all even the best written titles and descriptions if they don’t entice the visitor to click to your website are of little use. Try and build trigger to action for all keywords, it could include certain USP’s your product or service has, some highlighting benefits, or an offer to hard to resist.

Once you have a great title and description, keep working on it, check your Google analytics to see which of your titles the users are clicking, and which of them they are not. Don’t be afraid to play around with different titles to see what works and what does not.

Tips for choosing a title that captivates:

1. Use copy that triggers certain emotions or call for action on part of the visitor
2. Build the “what’s in it for me” factor into your title copy
3. Create honest titles that are related to your sites content
4. Keep the title around 80 characters and your descriptions around 200 characters.
5. Spend as much time understanding the title, what will make it more captivating, and what will entice a visitor to click through.
6. Build important keyword phrases into the title and description ensuring it still reads well

While the above are a list of things you should be doing, there are a few things one should never be doing like keyword stuffing, where the keyword is repeated unnecessarily in the title and description just for the purpose of fooling a search engine. The search engines are smart enough to figure your little ploys, so unless you want your pages to be labeled spam, don’t stuff the keywords unnecessarily in your meta tags. Make sure you read the tile out aloud to see how it sounds. The visitors do the same thing, they read out your title in their minds, so if it makes sense to you, hopefully it will make sense to them.

Also avoid using terms like “best”, “top”, “guarantee”, “world class” etc which are generally used in traditional marketing...in the online world there are a lot of useless guarantees floating and no one takes them seriously anymore. Certain words are stop words for search engines … basically they are words that add little or no value to the sentence like where, how, or, not, but etc. List of stop words available at http://www.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?answer=981.

In life we take the titles a bit too seriously, marketing manager, father, president of goofy club, great golfer, and many more.

In seo practice, we need to take the TITLE, A LOT MORE SERIOUSLY.

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A SEO Expert that’s right for you!

Having been in the business of Internet marketing and SEO in Mumbai for the past few years, I have often been asked if SEO or search optimization is applicable and realistic for small businesses, home businesses and budding entrepreneurs.

Whether it’s applicable for a garage enterprise, a local business or a large corporate is not the real question to be answered. The real question here is - Can the prospect of targeting billions of Internet users world-wide searching daily for news, entertainment, businesses, products and services be avoided by any smart businessmen.

Answering this part was easy, but what gets tricky is how to go about choosing a SEO expert and building an Internet marketing strategy that’s right for your business.

The issue is that even businesses that are aware of the benefits of SEO and Internet marketing are not sure which way is the right way to go. And I don’t blame them. After all there are so many misleading guarantees flying around, seo gurus and experts who claim they have found the secret key to driving traffic and business, and the stories of websites who claim to be generating thousands of hits without raising a finger does not lessen the pressure to get it right.

So in this confusing marketplace, how is one to go about choosing a SEO professional right for your business?

There are no shortcuts in life. It’s the same way if you want to hire a SEO expert and come up with a winning SEO strategy that works for you, then its best that you understand whatsoever you can about the ground realties of search engine optimization.

No I am not asking you to all to become SEO experts and spend your days and (probably) nights identifying the right keywords, optimizing the pages, creating compelling content, building quality links, checking and tweaking for rankings, analyzing analytics reports, analyzing competitors strategies, keeping up with search engine algorithms, and promoting your website across social networking and social bookmarking sites, blogs, RSS feeds and article submission sites. After all then I would be out of business.

There are many things the SEO expert, or a SEO company will not tell you. It’s not that they are liars; they just don’t feel you will be able to understand if told the naked truth. After all no one wants to be a wet blanket and destroy your dreams of achieving top rankings, and making your millions.

I hope to shed light on some of the blocks in your mind, before you go ahead and identify a SEO expert that’s right for you.

• Seo is for technology buffs, I am from marketing and sales
• I know my business, product and service better than anyone else. Why do I need a SEO
  expert to identify winning keywords?
• I boast a list of 200 keywords all listed on my home page, how can I miss
• I have read an article or two about SEO, and I know what works best
• I have applied the right keywords, and meta tags to all pages, now all I have to do is wait
  for the magic to begin
• I have built links for 2 months, now I can rest
• The more links I build the better will be my rankings, quantity is the only factor
• As long as I apply the best seo strategies, I do not need to create interesting content
• In two months my site will be optimized, I can then reap the benefits for years to come
• I have a serious business - social networking and bookmarking sites are for kids
• I am ranked number one, now I can rest

Note that each of the above statements is partially false, and if we tell you the whole truth, you will feel we are the liars. So choosing the right SEO expert for your company is not so much about finding a good vendor (all good companies know how to do that), but about clearing the misconceptions about SEO in your mind, so that when the right SEO guy walks in through that door, grab him and don’t let go.

PS: Incase I have missed out anything in my list above, please add to my comments.

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Soul of SEO Expert

No seo expert will tell you the story of the grueling hours spent strategizing for the right keywords and optimization of the pages, the painstaking time it takes to build quality links and to create exciting content that keeps the user and the search engines happy, the unending patience wondering why your pages have not ranked though you have followed the search guidelines to the dot, or the late hours spent keeping up with the search engines ever changing algorithms. So why do we lie?

Is it that we believe that we are a breed of new age seo experts with powers that most would call amazing, or is it that we feel we have the key that could open the door to riches beyond comprehension? How about seo specialists claiming to be gurus, spreading their message to save the planet (or their slacking rankings) thinking, they like God, can do almost anything!Either way most of my seo colleagues around the world would vouch, that at most it meets their basic needs. So you must now be wondering how is it that this poor guy can open the doors to your success.

Well I am not here to tell you that story, or claim dominance over search engines, nor am I here to give you the ten best tips to high rankings, or give you a guarantee to making money as easy as a “wink”. It will take more than three guesses as to where I am headed in this article. Honestly I don’t know the end, or the middle as a matter of fact, all I know is that I must share what I am to say, must understand what I am to speak, must learn what I am to be.

In Astrix and Obelix comics there is the Druid who makes magic portion that gives the tribe members a special buzz that they drink to become stronger and defend their village against the BIG Roman Empire. I would like to believe we seo specialists are magical Druids, alone in the forest, gathering knowledge, tools, insights (add a dash of herbs and magic mushrooms) that can help create that special buzz for their clients…oops I meant tribe.

So are search engines the BIG Roman Empire of the past? To answer that question I would like to first state that I am not in my complete senses while I write, thus it will make sense to you as to why I scorn my stomach, or make a hole in the bed where I sleep, or give milk to the snake that will eventually pour its venom inside me, or crack stupid remarks trying to be funny where I should be focusing on pleasing the users who are reading this article hoping to gain some clue to this seo man mystery.

There I said it. The search engines are the BIG Roman Empire! And they won’t stop till they dominate every single word combination in the English dictionary and beyond. But before you get frightened and run away from your seats wondering if BIG brother is watching and worse judging every letter you type, let’s take a pause here…

In a modern day parallel psychedelic universe of Astrix and Obelix, the druid would make magical portion that would give the tribe members a special buzz that would make the Romans fall in love. Why fight? When you can get them to like you, better yet love you. Is it possible to make the BIG Roman Empire an ally?

Yes, I believe all it takes is a little magic portion, a little love, and a seo expert in India working alone on his notebook till the wee hours of the night. So let’s give this poor seo guy a BIG break, after all he is the one guiding and welcoming the new guest with gusto to your home. And the search engines are really the doorway through which the new guest will enter your house. So all ends well, and the war between good and evil can finally come to rest. After all, at the end of the day we are all liars?

Visit me at http://www.seo-optimization-experts.com/

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