Very eloquent title, eh?

Still, now I have got your attention, are they? Just a little bit stupid? Or redundant? Or boring?

Not going to go massively indepth here (it’s in the training course!), but I have just been doing some analysis for a new client and part of this was checking out the competition. Now I can understand if you have never paid any attention to your page titles (it is quite nice to walk into a project and know that you can make a big change that is totally under your control); but when you see some of the actually ‘optimised’ titles that have been put together, well… why bother and what logic are you using?

Here is a random list of things I have come accross this morning.

1. Title that are so unattractive that nobody would ever click on (you wouldn’t do this in your PPC, would you?)
2. Two word titles for a company’s home page (that that all you do?)
3. Fifty word titles on a company’s home page (no need to list ALL you do)
4. Company name on every title (that old chestnut)
5. Using the ‘|’ (pipe) to separate keyphrases (ugly, over used and because you need to use two spaces uses more characters than just a comma)
6. Site-wide titles (yes, they still do exist!)

There are lots more, but these are the ones that come to mind right now.

Your page title is a powerful thing. Use it well and it will improve your on-site SEO by a bigger percentage than almost any other element. However, always remember this is what will be the clickable link when you get listed. If you get to the top three you will get traffic anyway, but anything lower than that and your title will make the difference.

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