OneSearch

I have just finished reading a great article about the importance of title tags on your website’s home page. Making some small, simple improvements is a quick way to improve the site ranking for your local business.
The title tags are so important because it is the text within these tags that the search engines like Google, Yahoo, and MSN use to determine what keywords are relevant to a page. Title tags are also on of the most commonly neglected parts of a site design. Having good title tags can get your site ranked at the top of the search results for people searching for you and your business, and having a bad one can leave you out in the cold!

The search engines have moved more towards showing preference to titles that match closer with what users are looking for, so having your title tag coincide with common query formats, you will most likely receive many more referrals from customers.

Simply putting the name of your local business in the title tag is not a good idea and can no doubt result in many lost opportunities.

Typically, there are two formats that searchers will use when they’re looking for a local business — (1) they will search by the business name and location, and (2) they will search by the business type and location. So, since most users are seeking local businesses by the business name and the category, it’s extremely important to include all three of these in your title tags.
For example:
“Pet Supplies: Kelley’s Pet Shop, Cleveland, Ohio.” “A Spanish Restaurant: Mallorca, New York City”
This title would more closely match user searches for “pet shops in cleveland” and “spanish restaurants in new york city”.

When trying to determine what business type to use, it’s important to use the words that you think people will most likely by typing into the search engines. For example, if you are searching for a business in the yellow pages, it may be listed under “Plumbing Contractors”, but most users would most likely just be searching for “plumbers.” So it’s good to keep that in mind.

This article suggests some easy guidelines for your title tags. They are:

1. Your homepage title tag should be a combination that includes the Business Name, the Business Type, and the Locality.
2. Should the name of your business come first or the type of business? The first thing you should list is the term that users will be seeking most. Display your name first if the majority of your business comes from existing clientele, or if you’re located in a small town where most people already know you. Display your type of business first if you are trying to attract more new customers.
3. The shorter the better. Try to avoid throwing in too many terms.
4. Your title tags should be different for every page on your site. Your homepage should include the entire name, including the business type. The rest of the pages should use just the business name combined with the name of the individual page on the rest. Ex: “Mallora Restaurant: Menu”, “Mallorca Restaurant: About Us”, “Mallorca Restaurant: Map & Directions”, “Mallorca Restaurant: Contact Us”.
5. Sometimes a business will carry a certain product that users may be looking for just as much as the business type. If you can include these product keywords in an effective way and without making your title too long, you should do so. Examples: “Rachel’s BMW Car Dealer in Dallas.”
6. Most businesses need to use their city name for the locality name, but there may be times when a nickname would be more commonly be typed in by the user seeking a business in that location. “Indy”, for instance, or “Nob Hill Neighborhood”. In New York, users have increasingly moved away from typing in “new york city” in favor of the shorter “nyc”.
7. Keep nonessential terms out of the title. Also, avoid special symbols such as trademark characters or copyright characters. Those can be shown somewhere else on your site. Having too many unnecessary terms and content in your titles will hinder your titles from matching exactly with a user’s query in the search engine.
8. Do not include street addresses in your titles. Some optimization experts have recommended this, but it does not help in most cases. Users do not tend to be looking for a specific address when searching for a business. So those extra words just distract the search engines from determining the main idea of the site.
Forming good title tags for local business websites is very important to improve your site’s ranking, and it’s easy to do. Doing this can result in a significant improvement in your business. Try it out!