Home is a Destination, Not a Title Tag

Title tags on your local business website are very important. They tell the search engines and people searching for your product/service whether or not you are worth their time.

3 Things a Title Tag Is

1. It’s that text you see at the top of your internet browser bar. The title tag defines the title of a website page.

2. It’s also the link text that shows up in search engine results.

3. The title tag is a major (not the only!) factor used by Google to identify the content of your site and whether your site is worth listing in results when someone is searching for what your business is, does and/or provides. In other words, it is a big component of search engine optimization of your website.

And, What A Title Tag Is Not

Home is a destination, not a an effective title tag…How often do you see “Home” show up in the top search results on Google?

Crafting Your Title Tags

As you can see, title tags are an important part of your website that help people identify quickly in search results whether your product/service/offering fits their query. It may be the difference between whether a person clicks on your website link or your competitors.

Each public page of your website has its own title tag. Most websites have a way of editing each page’s title tag. For example if you built your website using Intuit’s Website Builder then you have the ability to edit your title tags, called page titles by Intuit. If your website was built by someone else then they should be able to edit your title tags.

We build our websites with WordPress and use Yoast’s WordPress SEO plugin to format our title tags.

A title tag is 70 characters in length, so use it wisely. A few simple considerations to start.

Put more important words at the beginning
Make it readable to humans (don’t just write it for Google)
It should contain keywords relevant to that website page
Do not stuff with keywords or repeat the same words over and over

Local Business Title Tags

As a local business your title tags will be formatted differently from a business that services larger areas or are global. This is because your physical location and/or areas served are important to those searching for local products and services. Your location is also important to Google and other search engines that are delivering local search results.

The following are suggestions to be considered when writing your title tags.

Business Name:

Doesn’t have to be in every title tag. Good news for businesses with long names or where name recognition is not important at all
Put in title tag if business name is important or contains keywords
Put in beginning of title tag if it contains keywords or very recognizable
Recommend that it be in your Home, About and/or Contact pages title tags.

Location:

Include at least your city and state in your title tag
Should be in every title tag
Include at beginning of page title if in a competitive market and location is important, i.e. Boston Cosmetic Dentist or Cosmetic Dentist Boston
On Contact and/or Location specific pages include street address
For businesses who travel to their customer’s location put in areas served — cities, towns, metropolitan areas, etc.

Phone Number:

Include in your page title on your Contact/About/Location pages
There is speculation that including your phone number in the page title of the page you link your Google Place page too will help in your rankings

Keywords in Your Title Tags

Your Home Page title tag should contain what your main business is, i.e. Hair Salon, Landscaper, Auto Body Shop.
Use your other pages to include keywords that say what you offer/do, i.e. haircuts, weeding services, dent repair.
Look at similar businesses in large cities who rank high in Google, what keywords are in their title tags?
Type your keywords into Google and look at related searches
Use Google’s Keyword Tool to find search volume and competition of keywords. Select “Exact Match” to get better traffic estimates.