Choosing a SEO title for your blog or website

Choosing a title for your blog or website to help your SEO

The first ten words that a search engine reads about your blog or website are in the title. The title appears on the tab of the browser window when your website page or blog page opens.

http://www.DennisDavisPhotography.com

It is not the same thing as the headline, which should appear at the top of your article in large bold letters, because you have applied the html command <h1> to your headline, which lets the search engine know that it, is a headline and the second most important words on your page.

<h1>Your Headline Should Be Tagged with a h1 tag</h1>

I have seen lots of beautiful websites and blogs, designed by skilled and gifted graphic designers, who have titled their blog or home page “home” “untitled” or “home page”.  Search engines pay more attention to the 5-10 words in the title than all the other words in the entire website or blog. What a waste to not bother to tell the search engine what topic is being discussed on the blog or website! The html code for the title of one of my photography websites reads like this

<title>Long Beach Photography Studio, business headshots and advertising</title>

The title tag should appear in the first 10 or 15 lines of code on your page, so open your website or blog page in html or source view and see what you have written between the title tags. How many important keywords appear in your title? Are those keywords the ones your customers are using to find you?

Notice in the title, the first thing mentioned is where I am located. I often also use the words “Los Angeles” or “LA” in my titles, because I am also trying to draw customers from the larger population base. However, Long Beach is an easier keyword to place high on a search engine for as it has a population of 500,000, compared to Los Angeles with 14,000,000.

http://www.DennisDavisPhotography.com

I did a search on the Google Keyword Tool and found that the number one search connected with what I do is “Long Beach Photography”. Not Long Beach Photographers, not headshots, portraits, etc. So those are the first three words in my title. I do not shoot weddings, family portraits or pets, all my customers are businesses needing advertising or company website photographs or corporate headshots, so that’s what I put in my title.

The title of your website or blog has to tell both people and search engines “you have found what you are looking for, this is the right place.” You have to do it in ten words or less. “My blog” or, “Home Page” “Blogging with Steve” is not going to cut it. Answer the questions who, what, where or why such as “Growing Corn in Colorado with Charles” which would give search engines something to chew on, or look at the title of my number one competition for this blog, “Social Media in SEO / Social Media today”. Note that the keywords Social Media was repeated in the title, and it is the number one site on Google for the topic of social media.

Another of my websites has a title tag that looks like this

http://www.DennisDavisPhotography.com

<title>Commercial Photographers In Los Angeles</title>

I started my SEO in the right place with this site, I started with the URL which has excellent keywords http://www.LosAngeles-Photo.com  As I am going after Los Angeles clients with this website, not Long Beach clients like my other one, I tried to make the title as short and to the point as possible, while creating an echo or repeat of the idea in the URL. If you can buy a URL with your primary keyword in it you are much farther ahead. However, even a wonderful URL like mine cannot overcome the effect of a website or blog with the title of “Home”.

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