I don’t care how great the design is, I immediately hate a web site that misuses the title tag or uses a valuable home page space to say “Welcome” or worse.
Title tags are perhaps the single most important SEO element of a page. If you get them wrong, you can kiss a top ranking in Google goodbye.
Page content has to have a point - and has to get to the point quickly - in order to bring visitors into your site and the narrative created to promote your goods, services, and people.
Which is why I hate barren homepages. I hate the waste. I hate the misuse of opportunity. I wonder who’s behind it. Did they accept payment for their work?
So what’s the right way to say welcome through site content? (I’ll get to title tags in a moment.)
- Provide facts, not adjectives
- Make a clearly communicated value statement on every page
- Have a simple, streamlined and functioning shopping cart
- Create page content, from title tag to page footer, that adds to understanding, rather than confusion
Give visitors value with clearly signed paths to your services, products and information.
Title tags are a little easier. After all, they’re usually just five to fifteen words that describe simply and specifically what you’re selling. They have to have substance and be relevant to revenue or visitor experience metrics.
Here are three quick examples of title tags. They’re written for a hypothetical plastic surgeon’s web site.
1. Look and Feel Fabulous! Welcome to our official practice website!
Title No. 1 has zero value to human visitors and to search engine bots. These ten words don’t say anything at all. No one searches for these things. And, even if someone has your URL and finds your page, they don’t tell them anything about you.
2. Marion Schwarzberg, MD - Cosmetic Plastic Surgery in Palm Beach
Title No. 2 takes a giant leap and improves on No. 1 by using the key phrases that bring traffic to a medical specialist’s site - physician name, surgical specialty, and location.
3. Breast Implants, Liposuction & Face Lifts by Palm Beach Cosmetic Surgeon Marion Schwarzberg, MD, FACS
No. 3 improves upon No. 2 by listing specific plastic surgery procedures by the names customers call them. In Google search results, the title will display as the actual text link to your page. So, a well written title tag improves the chances that your site will rank for specific key phrases, and it also could influence a search user to click through to your site, and not to one of the other nine sites that are shown on the search results page.
A word about using jargon or medical or technical speak when trying to reach your customer.
To a surgeon, augmentation mammaplasty is the right way to say breast implant. But the customer is in charge here - and the customer searches for “breast implants.”
Apply this principle to your own title tags. Use Google Analytics or Google Adwords to check how customers search for you. Use customer centric key phrases in your title tag.
Key points to remember about title tags. Ditch the adjectives. Be clear and concise. Create title tags that are appropriate to different pages on your site, and the content that is specific to those pages.
Remember. Nobody googles the word “welcome.”
