A Title Tag By Any Other Name

so you're interested in better optimizing your site for search engines and want to know where to start.

the first thing (well, second thing, after doing keyword research...) is to optimize the Title tags of all your website's web pages if at all possible.

the title tag is the single most important textual element of a web page and is the identified by the search engine spiders as the key to determine what the given web page is about.

if the title tag is not descriptive or does not speak to the page's content, you are missing the boat entirely.

the title tag also happens to be the hyperlink that shows up in the search engine results pages of Google/Yahoo!/MSN, etc. so having a title that makes sense and speaks to the web page is also important from a usability standpoint.

make sure that your titles are well thought out and explain your page's content. center around no more than 2-3 keywords and/or keyword phrases.

then, make sure your page actually speaks to these keywords. having the body content reflect the title text brings the user experience and the bot experience full-circle.

now go out their and optimize your title tags. you, your end-users and the spiders will be glad you did.