Our previous articles on the Micro Visions, Inc. blog indicated the top factors that help websites achieve high placement in search engines as:

Factor #1 – keyword focused anchor text in inbound links
Factor #2 – external link popularity
Factor #3 – diversity of link sources

Today we discuss the #4 factor: keyword use anywhere in the title tag. This factor is usually one of the easiest to optimize, since it involves simple changes directly on your website.

Where the Title Tag Displays on a Web Page

While it may sound like the title tag goes at the top of your webpage, it actually goes at the top of your browser window. For example, here is a shot of Micro Visions’ home page.

The title tag appears at the top of your browser window

The title tag is emphasized in the picture below, and reads “Micro Visions Inc. – Your Objective Information Technology Advocate and Managed Services Provider”:

Emphasized title tag in the browser menu bar.

Other Locations a Title Tag is Displayed

The title tag also appears as the underlined “link” when your website places on a SERP (search engine result page). Here’s an example of a Google SERP for the term “objective information technology advocate,” which is a keyword phrase in Micro Visions’ title tag:

The searched term reveals Micro Visions at the "Top of the List" (get it?)

As you can see, Micro Visions comes up first on this term, and the searched upon term is even in bold in the title tag. Another thing to notice about the title tag displayed above is that part of it is truncated. Having longer title tags is your decision, but search engines will read up to 120 characters (including spaces) in that tag, so we tend to use as many as make sense for describing what is on that web page.

The Logic Behind Title Tag Significance in Search Results

Most website visitors who are looking for something using a search engine will click on a link that contains the same keywords they searched on. Search engine developers view this user behavior as very significant, thus, if you put targeted keywords in the title tag on your pages, it helps your site’s placement on those keywords.

More Tips When Optimizing the Title Tag

As with SEO in general, there are numerous details about every strategy, and knowing and implementing as many as possible is what makes one site place higher than another and thus be more visible online. Here are a few more of those title tag details:

• Title tags should be unique per page. Time should be spent in identifying appropriate keywords, matching landing pages, and then optimizing the title tag for those keyword phrases.
• Use appropriate keywords that describe what is on that page as well as the search terms users are querying.
• Many CMS (content management system) website programs now have methods for you to add title tags yourself. If your CMS has this capability, you can do this yourself very easily.
• The source code for a title tag is very easy, and looks like this:

< title >Put title tag contents here< / title >

On non-competitive keywords, title tag changes may result in placement without much more work, but on highly competitive keywords, the linking factors we discussed in earlier Vision articles are absolutely necessary. Combining appropriate links to optimized landing pages makes for powerful optimization.

Top Of The List LLC is a Grand Rapids search engine marketing firm working with Micro Visions, a leading information technology and managed services provider. Top Of The List offers organic SEO packages which target all five top optimization factors, helping our clients achieve optimal search engine placement and drive increased target market traffic to their websites. Learn the fifth most important search engine optimization factor in next month’s Vision, or contact Top Of The List at 616-460-6778 today if you’d like to begin optimizing your website today!

This is where local search comes to the rescue. Local search shines by delivering customers you may never have otherwise had. According to Wikipedia local search “is the use of specialized Internet search engines that allow users to submit geographically constrained searches against a structured database of local business listings.” That is to say, someone (a potential customer) types something like the following into a search engine…

“pizza delivery grand rapids mi”

A typical local search.

…and, voila! The search presents the results as a list or maybe even a map showing all the nearby pizza deliveries in the area you specified; it’s the new way to “let your fingers to do the walking” and everyone is doing it.  Local search is a highly effective form of pure Internet advertising, poised to eclipse traditional advertising and it’s easy to see why with the proliferation of ubiquitous, always-on internet devices and location enabled search. Best of all, it’s free, easy to setup, and offers powerful tools and features to increase exposure and drive more business.

Results from a local search

Several services offering great features of which every business owner should take advantage include local.yahoo.com and yelp.com. We’ll focus on Google’s Local Business Center (www.google.com/lbc) offering to get your business on the way to harnessing the power of local search.

Google has distilled the essence of its Local Business Center down to three main areas: manage your local listing, engage potential customers and see the results. Here’s a quick overview of some of the features you can look forward to and how to begin cashing in on local search for free!

Offer coupons online.

To start, head over to www.google.com/lbc and sign up. From there, answer the questions and complete the forms as requested to add or claim your business listing. To verify that you are in fact the owner of a business, you can elect to have Google call the listed phone number of your business and then enter a code (nearly instantaneous) or have a postcard sent to the business address (about 10-days); I had to claim the Micro Visions, Inc. listing via post. Once you receive and enter your business verification code you’ll be free to post information within your listing.

A listing page as seen by customers.

LBC analytics

Geo-analytics display where search comes from.

Investing a little time creating a local business listing will help inform your customers and makes your business standout above competitors.

One of the best APIs we have had the pleasure of using belongs to Campaign Monitor. Campaign Monitor (CM) is a web service where clients can manage their email lists. We have developed applications that bridge our own client’s applications with services provided by CM. The service is top notch and their API is a joy to work with.

We’ve also worked with PayPal’s API. PayPal offers a wealth of developer documentation at x.com. Unfortunately, the documentation is inconsistent as you travel between the official documents, the online documents, the support forums and the unofficial forums (where many of the answers are found of course). I posted an article to specifically address some of the hurdles you will encounter in configuring Recurring Payments (subscriptions) for PayPal’s Website Payments Pro plan.

Companies offering their own APIs would do well following Campaign Monitor’s example. Solid code and solid documentation make them an easy referral for future clients.

Jason Johnson and Jimmy Wales

If you’ve ever done a search on the web for just about anything, chances are one of the results right up near the top of the page was for a subject page within Wikipedia.  Wikipedia is the world’s first, largest, online, open-source encyclopedia truly created by the people, for the people, in that the entries are articles which have been written collaboratively by volunteers from all over the world. What’s more, just about all of the articles can be updated, changed and edited by anyone with access to the Internet.  Today Wikipedia is “the” encyclopedia on the internet, and one of the ten (sixth according to Alexa ranks) most visited web sites in the world.

The effects of Wikipedia are profound and fundamentally changing the way knowledge is created and distributed throughout the world today. So where did it all start? With Jimmy Wales.

Jimmy Wales is the founder of Wikipedia, ranked 12th by Forbes Magazine in their first annual “Web Celeb 25” List, and named one of TIME Magazine’s “100 Most Influential People”. Today we had the satisfaction of attending his speaking engagement about “Democracy and the Internet.”

He shared stories about how developing and closed countries are slowly, cautiously becoming more and more democratized (even if only online), and how Wikipedia and the internet as a whole are beginning to ever so slightly “flatten” the world, open markets and promote cultural understanding.  Another interesting theme Mr. Wales presented during the opening of his speech, using various analogies, was how over time many things have increased in complexity, yet accessibility has broadened,  while our tools and maybe minds have too.  It was a fascinating presentation and I had the privilege of meeting him after the talk.