The title you give to each web page on your site is important.

Your page title is important as it’s still one of (if not the #1) “onsite” factor used by Google to determine where to rank your web page in search results.

Your title also determines whether a human being will click on your page when it shows up in Google search results. Using the correct words in your page title will result in more people coming to your website.

Here’s a quick summary of what you need to know about web page titles.

Google love

To help your SEO you need to put your important keywords in your page title. Of all the places on your website where you can put your keywords the #1 place for SEO is in your web page titles.

Research has shown that Google reads these web page titles from “left to right”, giving more weight to the keywords on the left. Therefore you should put your keywords in your page title with the most important keyword for that page on the left, then the next most important and so on.

This is where many local business owners go wrong. Usually your business name is not an important keyword. This is because once someone types your business name they are already looking for you. That “battle is already won”!

What you usually want to do is show up in search for keywords like “insurance agent Ridgewood”. So you would want a web page on your site with a title “insurance agent Ridgewood”. Then for clarity and branding add your company name to the right of the keywords “insurance agent Ridgewood | Nigel’s Brokerage”.

The way search engines operate is evolving all the time. One of the most recent developments is Google’s shift towards semantic search. Now your web page title does not need to be an exact match to the keywords I am searching for, close will work too.

People love

Think about your own internet browsing experience. What attracts your eye in a page full of search results? What persuades you to click on a particular website over another? Which titles would you completely ignore?

Your title is a user’s first connection to your brand and your website so it’s crucial to make a good impression. All that shows up on a search results page is your web page title and the pages meta description. Whatever these say is how your brand is portrayed to a new potential client.

The way your title is worded is a major determinant in whether a searcher will click on your page and come to your site. Not only that but Google is getting so smart these days that it is tracking how many people click on your results and using that as yet another input into how to rank you.

Title tags are an important factor in how your web pages are ranked in Google and how many humans actually visit your website. Both of those are important factors in growing your local business these days.