SEO Explained - Page 6
Considerations in building good html titles 

What to consider in building your page <title>

Given Google and other web search engines use the <titles> to determine whether your page is relevant to show users in the results, you need to ensure that your page title contains words that match what the user is likely to search for, and also that actually make some sense.

On your home page, I recommend using the primary keyword phrases you determined in the first step earlier in your page <title>.   Other considerations when constructing a good page title are:

Length of your page title – try to keep it to < ~80 chrs, as many search engines (as could be seen on the previous page) – just don’t display more than this.   Also, there is debate in the SEO community about the best length of a <title>, but I try to keep it to 60 – 80 chrs usually.

Rule of Leftness – words which appear closer to the beginning of your <title> (ie towards the left) are weighted more heavily in the search results and given greater relevance…also they appear first in your search result listing so use your most important words/phrases first.

Sequence Matching – If the user types in Nike Sneakers into the search engines, then <title> containing “Nike Shoes and Sneakers” will be better than a title containing “Sneakers and Shoes from Nike” as the user's search words match the title, in the order in which they were entered.

Don’t SPAM or Keyword Stuff the <title> – You will gain no benefit from using a keyword 5 times in a <title>.   I recommend using a word a maximum of 2 times in a title, and only in certain circumstances which we’ll analyse below.

Given that SEO’s including Salsa – don’t have exact knowledge of the search engine algorithms, some of the above could be deemed to be speculation – but these are things we have learnt from our experience, and observation of what works.

Some examples of good <titles>

Lets say your primary keyword phrases are:

Keyword Phrase (Search Volume)

Nike Sneakers (8000)
Running Shoes (7000)
Dunlop Sneakers (3000)
Nike Air Force (500)

Despite the relatively small search volume on “Nike Air Force”, it might be a primary term you wish to optimise for as you might determine that this has a very high relevance to what you sell.  Also, even within this group – you might prioritise Nike Sneakers and Running Shoes ahead of the other two phrases…..we have assumed this in the examples below (ie these 2 phrases will feature earlier in the phrases – see “Rule of Leftness” above).

A <title> for these phrases might look like:

“Nike Sneakers & Running Shoes, Nike Air Force & Dunlop Sneakers”

Considering the comments above about “sequence matching” of keywords, in the example 1. above you could expect to achieve a strong match against the terms:

Nike Sneakers (exact match ie the words appears as an exact match & in sequence)
“Nike Sneakers & Running Shoes, Nike Air Force & Dunlop Sneakers”

Nike Shoes (sequence match):
“Nike Sneakers & Running Shoes, Nike Air Force & Dunlop Sneakers”

Running Shoes (exact match – the exact term appears):
“Nike Sneakers & Running Shoes, Nike Air Force & Dunlop Sneakers”

Air Force Sneakers (sequence match):
“Nike Sneakers & Running Shoes, Nike Air Force & Dunlop Sneakers”

….and a lesser match on :
Dunlop shoes (keyword match – ie words are present, but out of sequence)
“Nike Sneakers & Running Shoes, Nike Air Force & Dunlop Sneakers”

Dunlop running shoes (keyword match, out of sequence).
“Nike Sneakers & Running Shoes, Nike Air Force & Dunlop Sneakers”

Air force shoes (keyword match, out of sequence)
“Nike Sneakers & Running Shoes, Nike Air Force & Dunlop Sneakers”

So you can see that the sequence of words which match is important.  Also in the example above, the “Nike Sneakers” match would be heavily weighted as it appears close to the beginning of the phrase.    You might notice the use of '&' instead of 'and'.  This is to free up space in the title for use by more unique and important keywords (words like and, but, of - are called "stop words" and usually ignored for matching purposes).

The sequence matching, has in my experience prompted me to repeat the single most important word or phrase towards the end of the <title>  in order to increase the chances of a sequence match on the word in both directions.   So the repeated use of Nike in the example above ensures a match on both Nike Sneakers (exact), and also Sneakers Nike (sequence match).   The goal is to achieve as many sequence and exact matches as you can with an exact match towards the beginning of the title if possible for your most important phrases.   The theory and practice behind title authoring can consume a huge amount of time, but for now – these basic principles will stand you in good stead.

Plurals and Word Stemming

Many of the search engines use a technique called “word stemming” which essentially treats plurals, and minor variations in word endings as a match so Sneaker matches Sneakers.   This is worth keeping in mind when building your titles, as you can use a variant of a word in different places in order to achieve a sequence match on the stemmed variant of the word, and also to achieve an exact match on that variant too.

Page 7 - Location & Company Name / Brand in your page titles