When we look at search engine optimisation, or research the best methods to perform well in search engine rankings, we often tend to concentrate on Keyword Densities and Inbound Links. Both of these factors are extremely important in any search engine optimisation campaign but are far from being the sole determining factors in your success. Search engines will considers over a hundred different factors when they come to rank a web page and poor optimisation in any of these areas can lead to less than ideal results.
The Title Of A Web Page
The title of a web page may seem inconsequential in the grand scheme of things but, in actual fact, it can help improve rankings and can even improve your website’s performance. There are several factors to consider including the length of the title, whether it includes keywords in a prominent position, and whether your website uses dynamic or static page naming techniques.
Title Composition
The composition of a page’s title is one of the factors that will help improve your ranking and generally improve click through rates. When search engines index and subsequently rank a page they use the title of that page in the formation of their results. Long titles will be cut off and spiders are believed to only consider so many characters of a title. As such, short titles offer greater benefit to search engine optimisation.
Short Page Titles And Keyword Inclusion
Another advantage of short page titles is that you are essentially forced to include your primary keyword in a prominent position. With a long title, you may miss the cut and the keyword may appear in the ignored section of the title giving you no benefit in search engine rankings. Search engines bold keywords in the title and description that they display so users instinctively pay more heed to those titles that include the keywords. Bold text is more identifiable than standard text.
The Importance Of Search Result Performance
Search engine optimisation needs to consider more than just how high a page ranks in search engine results. The performance of a page will also depend on how appealing that page is to visitors. Because search engines only offer a small amount of text in their index results you need to make the most of every character that you can. A prominent keyword position will improve search engine optimisation performance. It’s a well known and considered phenomenon in Pay Per Click advertising and shouldn’t be overlooked in search engine optimisation either.
Static Page URLs And Search Engine Optimisation
Sites that use PHP and other dynamic programming languages use dynamic page URLs. These include queries sent to the server that invariably do not include the page title. As well as being unappealing to human visitors this can actually cause confusion for the search engines. Spiders may cut the URL off at a certain point essentially ignoring anything that follows the cut off point. Fortunately, there are a number of methods to improve this situation by converting dynamic page URLs to static ones offering yet another way to improve SEO.
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