I often see page titles on blogs that are not doing the site owner any good, so I thought I would bring it up. Page Titles are important, very important really! They do a couple things and if you are not thinking about it, you may miss the point.

Page Titles are what help you get indexed in search engines. They greatly help your SEO for the page/post. The better your page title matches the exact search of a user and the content of your writings, the higher and more likely your post/page will rank in the SE’s and people will click on them.

I know first hand that writing blog posts is NOT easy. I have spent 1-2 hours on some specific posts and even longer. Writing good, detailed information is not always the easiest. So why work your ass off and then not give yourself the chance to have a long lasting effect for the people that may search for what you wrote. Not just today, but next week, next month or even a year or more from now!

Your page title should contain keywords/phrase that somebody (more people searching, all the better) is or will be searching for. The more in order, the better!

Just as many domain owners search for "good domains" using Google’s Adwords Tool for search volume for specific domain names, your page titles can be researched the very same way.

The "longtail search phrases" with the lowest amount of results on Google, the quicker, more likely you will rank and rank high for the specific term. Now if an exact search term has 100,000 + results on Google, it will take a little time but you can rank. The same goes when there are Millions of results on Google. (see picture below)

The next thing your title should do, is invite people to Click It! It is a hard game to play to match a specific search term and have your title inviting, but it’s something that needs to be done!

Once you have your Page Title ready to roll, the next most important thing is your Meta description. Meta is the the text you see in search engines under the page title of the search results. You basically have about 155 characters to A.) Explain what you are writing about, B.) Match at least your page title again and C.) Help Invite people to click your page title again.

I use the Headspace2 WordPress plug-in which helps you select what you want to show in your Meta Description and page title. I always match my Page Title exactly with what I write, but I select my Meta Description so it contains specific keywords to match my page title keywords and is inviting.

The third thing to consider is that your URL maps out the specific keywords used in your Page Title. This will include "-" to separate your keywords so it’s easier for SE bots to read your keywords. Most permalinks in the WordPress system do this already for you, but you can edit the permalink if you wish or type them for a regular website.

Here is a picture to see what I am talking about:

Now, not everytime you write something needs a Powerful SEO Page Title, but it does help to use it more often then not!

If you are wondering Why or How I get the term "Search Answered" in my SE indexed page titles… that is simply your Blog Title. I selected the term because I think it helps get people to click! I am saying, "click here, as this answer’s your search silly" but only in two words! The whole term is actually, "Search Answered! DotWeekly.com" but Search Answered! is mainly always what shows in the page title.

I hope this post helps bring a little more light into why Page Titles are important! Meta and your URL are almost just as important for SEO reasons as well, but it all starts with your page title.