Title Tag Essentials for Local Search

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CHR

CHR

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Nov 28, 2002
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Chris Silver Smith has written a fantastic article over at Search Engine Land about Forming Good Title Tags for Local Business.

Since users are most commonly seeking their business by biz name or biz category plus the locality, they need to incorporate all three of these factors in the title.
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Guys, this is one of the simplest and most effective techniques to help search engines identify your company as 'local' in your category.

If your site is hosted by a WS or other company where you cannot change your title tags yourself, craft a tag and then email your hosting company to make the change.

Just a couple of minutes work can make a difference. :)
 
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CHR said:
...Just a couple of minutes work can make a difference. :)
Click to expand...

strong title, ranks well with search engines...

Here's an example...
Media99 template site...
<TITLE>Flower Delivery by Richardson's Flowers - Medford's Premier Flower Shop - Online Florist in Medford NJ</TITLE>

or another example, when serving surrounding area...
FTD template site...
<title>Central Square Florist - Cambridge MA Serving Metro Boston Area : Home</title>

.
 
My title has all of the towns I deliver to so that I show up under all of the local searches and other searches. I can track search phrases so I have found that people will often just use the phrase "florist (or flowers) XYZ City, State".
 
inferno63 said:
My title has all of the towns I deliver to so that I show up under all of the local searches and other searches. I can track search phrases so I have found that people will often just use the phrase "florist (or flowers) XYZ City, State".
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Your title is way too long... (have you noticed you don't rank well for florist Uniopolis, the end of your list)

Google show 66 characters in their search results listing, Yahoo allow listings up to 120 characters long. What I would suggest is that you bear these sensible limits in mind when writing the contents of your title tags.

If you need a long title make the first 66 characters Google friendly and use the rest for Yahoo.

It is important to have a unique title on every page of your website. Try using some of the other city names on these pages instead of losting the effect on your home page...

.
 
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Man ... I spent most of the flight home from Omaha last night writing posts for the Florist SEO blog, including one on title tags. I'll make sure to link to Chris's post for more info. Makes my job a little easier :)

Ryan
 
mlou said:
Your title is way too long... (have you noticed you don't rank well for florist Uniopolis, the end of your list)

Google show 66 characters in their search results listing, Yahoo allow listings up to 120 characters long. What I would suggest is that you bear these sensible limits in mind when writing the contents of your title tags.

If you need a long title make the first 66 characters Google friendly and use the rest for Yahoo.

It is important to have a unique title on every page of your website. Try using some of the other city names on these pages instead of losting the effect on your home page...

.
Click to expand...

I guess I don't understand. I am an amateur and learning more every day. Thank you for the input. Out of curiousity, why does the length have a negative effect? Does google only look a the first few characters? I like your suggestion to put the city names on other pages instead.
 
inferno63 said:
I guess I don't understand. I am an amateur and learning more every day. Thank you for the input. Out of curiousity, why does the length have a negative effect? Does google only look a the first few characters? I like your suggestion to put the city names on other pages instead.
Click to expand...

Your title tags should reflect the content of the specific page. You can stay general on your home page and be more specific as you develop pages with content you want to rank for.

See the attached image for an example of what Mlou was talking about. Only 67 characters showing in the title, the rest is cut off. Users will be less likely to click on truncated titles.

Ryan
 

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I noticed you're in Ohio. If you're interested in doing your own website well, I really really suggest that you get to Columbus for the Small Business Marketing Unleashed conference. Ask Matt Bailey or Stoney Degeyter to review your site. Those guys are top notch and worth several hundred $$$ per hour.

Ryan
 
To quote Steve Jackson...

Online uses of titles

1) Titles are used by website resource librarians, directory editors (such as DMOZ), and other webmasters (such as strategic link partners) when they link to your website.

2) The title is displayed in web search results by the vast majority of search engines to help you target and attract your visitors.

3) Nearly all the major search engines use a title tag in order to rank your page. Search engines deem the title one of the most important pieces of information when determining what the content of your website is.

4) The title is displayed in the visitors browser window usually at the top of the viewable part of the browser screen.

.
 
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