Your title tag is the cheapest thing you can fix this week

It is one line, it takes ten minutes, and on most small-business sites it is the single biggest thing holding the page back.

By Aman

What it actually is

The title tag is the blue line in a search result. It is not the heading on your page, it is not your company name in the browser tab by accident — it is the one piece of copy you own in somebody else’s search results, and Google weighs it more heavily than almost anything else on the page.

The mistake nearly everybody makes

Most small-business titles are the company name and nothing else. "Harbour Dental". Fourteen characters, no service, no place. That page cannot compete for "dentist galway" no matter how good the rest of the site is, because it has not said it is a dentist in Galway.

What to write instead

Service, place, name — in that order, in 50 to 60 characters so Google shows all of it. "Dentist in Galway — Harbour Dental". Say the thing somebody would type, then the thing that makes them trust it.

How to check it in a minute

Search your own business name, look at the blue line, and ask whether somebody who had never heard of you would know what you sell and where. If the answer is no, that is this week’s ten minutes. Our free report reads the same line and tells you the length.

Rather have us do it?

Send a paragraph about where you are now and get a written point of view back within one working day.

Start the conversation