Page Critic Guide

Optimizing Web Pages with the Page Critic

Overview
Researching Keywords
HTML Primer
Creating Web Pages
Optimizing Pages
Factors that Affect a Page's Position
Submitting Web Pages
Link Popularity

For a wealth of additional information and tips about search engine optimization, visit MarketPosition.com, the home of our monthly newsletter!

Title

The <TITLE> tag of your Web page is arguably the most important HTML tag or element. All the search engines consider the keywords in this tag and generally give those keywords a lot of importance in their ranking system. Therefore, if you were to create one page with a keyword in the title tag and another page with the same keyword in the body tag, the one with the keyword in the title will generally rank higher in most engines.

Many search engines use the HTML <TITLE> tag as the title of your page in the search results that appear to the user. What this means to you is that this HTML tag must not only work to your advantage for keyword scoring but also must be compelling to the reader. For more information about creating excellent titles for your web pages, read this informative article.

Example of a title tag:

<TITLE>Blue widgets sold here at rock bottom prices!</TITLE>

There are at least two elements to every Web page listing in the search engines' results:

1. Page title, which will be blue and an activated link to the site

2. Page summary description

Of course both must be compelling, but the <TITLE> tag has a special relevance if only because so many search engines use it exactly as it appears on your page.