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Home Page Title Tag Can Be a Dead Giveaway

December 29, 2010 By Ewan Kennedy

Does Your Home Page Title Tag Indicate an Absence of SEO?

Home page title tag - example 1
Home page title tag - example 1 (click for larger image)

Nearly every business owner or marketing manager I speak to relates stories of being repeatedly contacted by SEO companies promising to get them to the top of Google. These companies are usually sending out thousands of emails without making any attempt to assess whether their services would be beneficial to the recipient. I should know because I get these emails myself. The emails are usually dreadfully worded, sent from a hotmail address, and attempt to explain to me the value of SEO and link building. Oh, really?

The spammers themselves may be a nuisance but this service, when done correctly, is the best form of marketing there is and the opportunities are real. So how do you know whether your business would really benefit and is missing out or whether you would just be pouring money down the drain – or into the the hands of an internet scammer?

There’s no simple answer to that question but any prospective service provider should carry out at least a brief feasibility review of your website, have a good understanding of your products and/or services and also know what function your website is designed to fulfil before making any ‘selling noises’. But let’s assume for the moment that the principal role of your website, like most business websites, is to generate sales or leads. Let’s also suppose for the moment that your potential revenue stream will justify some expenditure on SEO.

Whilst there is no single factor that can be used to determine whether your business will actually benefit from SEO, there are a number of ‘signals’ that any SEO specialist ‘worth his salt’ can spot, within a few seconds of arriving at your website, and which indicate to them that your website may be a good prospect for SEO.

The quickest and most obvious signal is the home page title tag. It is visible immediately on arriving at the website’s home page. It is vital to get this right if you want to rank well for your most important target keywords. One can often surmise, at a glance, from this alone that no SEO work has been done on the website. That’s not to say that’s all there is to it. Far from it. But if there were only one aspect of SEO you were going to carry out, crafting a well optimised home page title tag would usually be it. So if that hasn’t been done, then the chances are nothing else has been.

So what is the home page title tag, where is it and what can you glean from it?

Here’s an example. Please click on this image for a larger screenshot.

Home page title tag - example 2
Home page title tag - example 2

Search engines interpret the page title tag in a similar way as a human would interpret the main heading at the top of a newspaper article. A good title will declare precisely what the newspaper article or web page is about and encapsulate the subject matter in a few very carefully chosen words. The home page title tag should normally contain the most important keywords that you wish the page to rank well for in Google’s results. This tag is very influential in determining your website rankings. If your title tag contains nothing other than “welcome”, “home page”, “your business name” or even worse the text “untitled document”, then your website is probably underperforming. I had better quickly add the vital health warning which is that there are always exceptions but in most cases this is what it means.

The tag is so important and such an opportunity to hook some extra traffic that it is usually wasted if it contains only your brand name. Most sites will rank number 1 for their business name anyway so dedicating the precious title tag solely to this often achieves nothing in terms of rankings. The useful length of a title tag is really limited to about 60 to 70 characters and the space taken up by a business name, especially a long business name, might just be better devoted to one of your keyword targets.

The surprising thing is that there are so many websites that are under performing for this very reason. Some owners of these websites will not have paid for SEO services whereas others may have paid either their website developers or SEO service providers who have woefully failed to deliver. Google itself has pointed out on numerous occasions the benefits of paying careful attention to this aspect of website development.

Well, if it’s so obvious, why shouldn’t you just make this change yourself and be done with SEO? Well, that’s because (a) there is a real art to crafting a good title tag and it requires lots of research and testing before doing so and (b) because that is only one in scores of aspects of SEO, albeit an important one.

That’s not to say that you can’t read up on SEO and do a very good job yourself. But any business manager has to decide whether to try and handle everything themselves or stick to what they’re good at and outsource the non-core activities to specialists. It is critical to get not only the choice of words in the tag correct but also many other aspects such as the order of the words, the overall length of the tag and the punctuation within it. If you are a substantial business and dedicated one or two days entirely to designing optimum page title tags for the main pages of your website, then you would not have wasted a minute.

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Filed Under: Local SEO, On-Page SEO, On-Site SEO, SEO

About Ewan Kennedy

Ewan is Google Ads and Google Analytics certified. A former professionally qualified accountant and maths graduate, he was CEO of a £20m turnover group prior to founding AdJuice. [Read more ...].

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AdJuice SEO Services Ltd
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Mark at SkateStation
Mark at SkateStation
08:12 20 Jul 20
We found Ewan after looking at various businesses in the Surrey area to set up and run our Google Shopping Ads/PPC account. Ewan is both passionate and extremely thorough in making sure we get an increasing ROI. The frequent reporting and advice on what we can do our end is on a personal level that I would imagine many other companies can’t match. We’re seeing our online sales revenue grow monthly and we’ll certainly continue to invest more through Ewan.
Des Earthcare
Des Earthcare
22:19 10 Mar 20
We very rarely write reviews or recommend other companies, but we felt we just had to give AdJuice a 5 star review, at the very least... We thoroughly recommend AdJuice and Ewan to any business looking for a professional, top quality SEO company.Our garden design and landscaping business, EarthCare Gardens Ltd is based on the borders of South London and Surrey, so we need a constant pipeline of decent projects and quality leads within a hyper local area. We tried several so called SEO experts over the years... Only to be disappointed time and time again, throwing good money after bad and getting nothing but rubbish services in return.Then, luckily, we found AdJuice... Ewan is a real pleasure to work with, super efficient, methodical and actually dedicated to the Art and Science of online marketing and Search Engine Optimization... And the icing on the cake: Ewan delivers really great results and outstanding value for money.If you've searched in vain for SEO experts, then search no more... You will see a superb Return on Investment and get plenty of good quality, online leads for your business too, but only if you work with Ewan and AdJuice SEO Services Ltd.
James Johnstone
James Johnstone
08:27 07 Jun 18
I've been working with Ewan for over 5 years and there's no one else I'd recommend for SEO and AdWords. This is simply because Ewan get's results and he gets the best results of the myriad of 'SEO experts' we've gone through (and there have been a lot of 'duds'). As well as the good and quantifiable RoI he achieves, it's his business acumen and diligence that differentiates him with other providers.
Sally Powell
Sally Powell
15:24 17 May 18
If you're looking for local seo in Surrey I can't recommend adjuice enough. Ewan was extremeley knowledgeable and was able to help my business re seo where others had failed.
Helen Atkinson
Helen Atkinson
16:11 02 May 18
I had recently set up an Adwords (PPC) account for our business but was unsure if it was set up correctly and so was looking for someone to review it. I really wanted to work with a local company and found Surrey based Adjuice. What I particularly appreciated about my initial call with Ewan was that there was no pressure selling. Ewan provided a fantastic review of my Adwords account with clear steps on how I can make improvements, which included bonus information on improving our website for local SEO. I would highly recommend Ewan, he is clearly very knowledgeable and I look forward to working with him in the future.
Cotton and Olive
Cotton and Olive
17:45 30 Mar 18
As an e-commerce retail shop owner based in Surrey, I asked Ewan to do SEO review of my e-commerce site to identify and address suspected problems. He turned up with an expert diagnosis of the existing problems and full recommendations to fix these serious issues causing a loss of traffic. He took his time and forwarded a full report with evidences and screenshots. Hence, it was easy for me to follow his diagnostic report which enabled me to act quicker to fix these problems. I will certainly recommend him if you are looking for Surrey based SEO service.
Ruth Roy
Ruth Roy
09:45 25 Oct 17
We commissioned Ewan to undertake some SEO research and produce a report with recommendations for one of our clients. Ewan produced a detailed report with many valuable insights into our client’s on-site SEO. We would use Ewan and AdJuice for future projects.
Nick Jones
Nick Jones
14:01 31 Aug 17
Adjuice have great knowledge of SEO and have provided us with great insight on growing our online presence.
James Titler
James Titler
13:10 25 Aug 17
It's been a pleasure working with Ewan and his knowledge of SEO has helped us grow our online presence - not just on Google My Business but his advice and help with meeting broader SEO objectives.
Pixies Nursery School
Pixies Nursery School
11:49 18 Aug 17
In 2015 we asked Ewan for SEO advice on our last website, prior to embarking on a mobile-friendly website upgrade project in 2016. Ewan advised on our existing situation, especially in connection with our visibility in Google’s local business search results. There were technical problems with our Google My Business listing and our listing on Google Maps which needed Ewan to speak directly with a member of Google’s staff to get them fixed. Ewan also advised on the SEO aspects of our new website at the design stage. Ewan’s work has helped us appear number 1 in Google’s local business results for some important search terms. Ewan was generous with his time and a pleasure to work with.
Donald Minchin
Donald Minchin
13:18 17 Aug 17
One of the best decisions that I made when I was recommended to Adjuice.My business has gone from strength to strength under the watchful eye of Adjuice looking after my online activity. I no longer have to worry about where my business ranks in google and it allows me to concentrate on increasing my companies business.Thanks for all your help.
Warren Ransome
Warren Ransome
08:26 17 Aug 17
Ewan knows SEO extremely well. I would recommend Adjuice without hesitation. We are still on page 1 for most of the keyword work Ewan did over 5 years ago. His work is money very well spent!!
Qdos Computer Consultants
Qdos Computer Consultants
08:24 17 Aug 17
AdJuice provides a valuable SEO service to Qdos and several of our clients. Ewan has an excellent technical knowledge of SEO and PPC, providing detailed monthly progress reports full of recommendations, and always giving thorough and well thought out responses to our questions.
Rachel Smith
Rachel Smith
09:00 11 Aug 17
Great report from Ewan to help us review, plan and invigorate our efforts on the web.
Olivia Shaw
Olivia Shaw
08:20 26 Jul 17
I have been working for 6 months with Ewan at Adjuice on a PPC (pay per click) campaign on Google adwords. Ewan's advice and expertise has been excellent and he is always extremely prompt and responsive to my questions and queries. His knowledge and understanding of how Adwords operates seems to be extensive and, as a result, the campaign has been extremely successful thanks to Ewan.
Shaun Perfect
Shaun Perfect
19:24 07 Oct 16
I've used Adjuice for a few years now with great results.
Martin Brown
Martin Brown
15:35 11 Sep 16
We've worked with AdJuice for over two years and it has made a major difference to where our company appears in search results. Ewan is always helpful, explains things clearly and prompt to respond.
Synergy Physio
Synergy Physio
06:57 20 May 16
Ewan at Adjuice has been helping me with our company's SEO since 2015 when I switched over to working with him. From the start he did a complete audit of my site and we came up with a plan of how we would build our presence and rankings. He has offered me some great advice and has been able to isolate the key areas where we can make large improvements. Each month I get a report with suggested improvements which are quick and easy for me to implement. Since bringing Ewan onboard our traffic has improved markedly and I know it will continue to do so.
Anna Haynes
Anna Haynes
16:06 09 Nov 15
We have worked with Ewan at AdJuice over several years and his SEO knowledge, practical approach and advice have led to significant improvement in our Google rankings across a number of key words. His contribution to our e-commerce business growth has been invaluable to us.
Michael Swinn
Michael Swinn
11:38 02 Feb 15
Adjuice have been very helpful in sorting out our SEO problems and our google rankings have gone from somewhere around page 15 to page 1. The ongoing monthly support and input from Adjuice is money well spent.
Stretch Ceilings
Stretch Ceilings
12:52 26 Nov 14
Adjuice has really helped us to understand the ways in which our website can benefit our business. We now have more structure to our Adwords campaign and have therefore seen a great improvement in our search results.
Ben Stanbrook
Ben Stanbrook
12:11 06 Oct 14
Ewan has been extremely supportive and insightful with regards to improving and optimising our website. He is always on hand to provide a thorough analysis of all of the work which he delivers, and has helped us to gain a much better understanding of SEO and what we can do to continue developing our website.Stanbrook & Nicholson
Joe Banner
Joe Banner
16:18 22 Nov 13
Having worked with Ewan Kennedy and Adjuice several times over the years, I have found his SEO expertise invaluable.He is always polite, attentive to my (and my client's) needs and makes a point of keeping himself informed of the latest and best techniques in order to offer the best possible service.I'm happy to recommend him to small and medium sized businesses that are looking for better representation in search engine results.
John Lennie
John Lennie
23:56 30 Oct 13
Ewan and his team have been instrumental in the success of my business. His genuine interest in its growth from the beginning has enabled me to achieve the results I've wanted in a relatively short period of time. His extensive knowledge on all things Seo and experience with Adwords has been crucial to the set up of my business. Without his help and guidance I would not be where I am today.
Elspeth Evans
Elspeth Evans
21:41 27 Oct 13
Ewan at Adjuice helped me with our company's SEO, offering advice which was practical and relevant to the nature and size of our business. Ewan understood our business needs and advice was provided in a language that I was able to understand and implement. Our website ranking benefited from his advice.
Dominic Tantram
Dominic Tantram
15:07 09 Oct 13
Adjuice has provided a first class bespoke SEO service, helping to cut through the SEO jungle and improve rankings. Having been disappointed by our previous supplier, Ewan Kennedy from Adjuice has become a trusted supplier to our business, providing strategic, tactical and practical support as and when needed, all backed up with excellent communication.
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