The title of your web page is an important element, not only to your human visitors but to the automated ones sent by search engines. Learn how to craft a title that will satisfy them both.

Titles are difficult. As I'm writing this article I haven't yet decided what its title will be. The challenge of picking a title varies according to what, exactly, one is attempting to bestow the title upon. The title of a non-fiction work should be clear and descriptive. Opinion pieces can be a little more flamboyant in order to catch the reader's attention. Fiction has its own set of quirks as well. One thing remains constant, the title can be a key component in the success or failure of a piece. Nowhere is this more evident than when choosing a title for your web pages.

Titles are, as of this writing, a core "on page" component of how a search engine determines the content, classification, and rank of a page. It is a logical first step. The content of the "title" tag, to the search engine spider, is one of, if not the first piece of content it will ever see on a web page. To the human user, titles are just text at the top of a browser window that may or may not ever be noticed. Titles aren't quite so important to humans. Human's generally start from the top of the actual browser display window and move down. Thus your title needs to be geared towards what spiders consider important. These days, most major search engine spiders are, ironically, looking for titles that are "natural" and "human friendly", not obviously finessed specifically for their own consumption. So, though, spiders are your key consumer, you cannot completely forget the human factor.

Your title should consist of the site's core keywords in general order of importance. "General" because you still want a title to "human friendly" and not simply a list of 8 or 9 keywords strung together. Remember that your title will most likely be on display in the search engine result pages (SERPs) as the link people click to actually visit your site. You need the title to be friendly, and not simply a dense string of keywords. Attempt to order the keywords you use in your title in order of importance. Your most important keyword goes first and so on, and avoid repeating them, as that may cause start tripping a spam filter. Again, always remember to craft a phrase from your keywords that effectively describes your site.

Crafting this phrase is not without pitfalls. There are certain "stop" words that you need to avoid, such as definite and indefinite articles ('a', 'and', 'the') and common prepositions ('of', 'from', 'while', etc). Determining if a word is a "stop word" is mostly common sense. Search engines used to provide feedback if they considered a word "too general" to include in results, but most major engines no longer claim to make such exclusions. Completely excluding "stop" words from your title may make it more difficult to craft a "human friendly" phrase, but keep trying. If you have to use any, make it as small a number as possible. Keep turning the phrase in your head, considering different alternatives. Ask for someone else's opinion on how to get rid of the "stop words", as a fresh perspective can always help.

Finally, keep the title phrase short. Though the exact number of words in the title a certain search engine "likes" at any particular time may change, a good rule of thumb is something around 9 to 12 words. Search engines, especially Google, are looking for "natural" content. Naturally, most people won't use a 30 word title stuffed with keywords. Reading such a title if it comes up in a search will seem quite unnatural to a human user. Remember, though your primary audience for the title tag is a spider, it is usually a spider that's looking for title tags humans will find appealing.

Hopefully by now this article has a title. I'm sure it's something great, just like the title on your home page. Remember, keep it short, keyword rich, and avoid stop words. Not the easiest thing to craft a natural-sounding phrase using these rules, but with a little perseverance, you'll come up with a winner.