Unique, Relevant Page Titles Help Your Search Engine Rankings

Attention must be paid to every facet of search engine optimization, but perhaps no single factor is as fundamentally important to search engine rankings as page titles. While page titles might seem an incredibly obvious area of concern when optimizing websites, duplicate page titles can drastically diminish search engine rankings.

Duplicate page titles can be the result of laziness, lack of awareness, a limited website publishing program, or any number of alternative reasons, but the bottom line is it’s simply imperative that unique and descriptive titles be implemented in order to maximize search engine rankings. The more information search engine crawlers can deduce from each page heightens the likelihood your site will be pinpointed for a specific keyword or phrase.

There are numerous ways to determine the different (or in some cases duplicate) page titles in your website. But whether you manually click through every page of your website, explore your entire site per a “site colon search” on Google or Yahoo! (for example site:bluetraffic.com), or extract your site’s data from utilities such as Google Webmaster Tools, the first step to rectifying title page redundancy is learning exactly which pages bear what titles.

As page titles offer arguably the most telling description of page contents for search engine crawlers, it is essential that each page title be unique to the contents of that respective page. For instance, on the BlueTraffic website we tailor individual pages according to topic. Therefore, a page displaying an article about the SEO Value of Keyword Rich Anchor Text is aptly titled “Keyword Rich Anchor Text for SEO | Anchor Text Link Optimization”.

Ecommerce websites would be wise to title each page according to the particular products and category being advertised on that page. This adds notable value to each page, which consequently strengthens the website as a whole.

No matter what your website contains, we recommend titles that accurately reflect the page content and contain the keywords or phrases you ultimately hope to rank high for in search engines. If you try any search query on the major search engines, you will notice the page titles cut off around 70 characters, so stay within that range. As an example, the homepage of an SEO firm targeting Cedar Rapids, Iowa might have a title something like:

Internet Marketing : Search Engine Optimization : Cedar Rapids, IA

Again, page titles might seem such an obvious and mundane concern that little should be written or said about them; however, neglecting page titles will undoubtedly have one of the most negative impacts on even the most polished websites. Contact Blue Traffic if you need help.