Perhaps one of the most under-utilized methods of site marketing with regard to search engine optimization is the site title. When most people think of marketing their site to the search engines they immediately focus on the keywords and description meta tags.

Well, if everyone is using meta tags and keywords, is only makes sense that search engines will look at other factors. Depending on the search engine (remember there is always debate here and the search engine strategies change), they might look at the "alt" tags in your images or even the first 50 words of content.

So where does the title tag fit in? Well, the title tag plays two important roles. Firstly, the title tag may be the text in the link displayed to a user searching on a search engine. For example, lets say the title of your page is "Bob's Candy Store". A search engine spider may pick up that title so that when someone searches for "candy stores", your page is one of the results. However, how likely is it for a visitor to click on a link that just says "Bob's Candy Store" when there are many other choices? Not very. You might improve it by turning the title into a small ad. "Bob's Candy Store" could become "Bob's Candy Store - Fine dark chocolate and gourmet jelly beans at discounted prices". Right away you get someone's attention, especially if they're looking for inexpensive chocolate or jelly beans. Don't let potential customers go somewhere else because they don't know what you offer.

The second reason for focusing attention to your title tag is to remember that search engines look for duplication of particular keywords and phrases. Going back to the "Bob's Candy Store" example, if you use "jelly beans", "dark chocolate", "discount prices" in the title tag, keywords, description and in the content of the site, the likelihood of high search engine placement is vastly improved.

Using the title tag does not have to center around only the home page either. Create unique and specialized title tags for any and all pages where you are looking for search engine placement. It doesn't matter what page a visitor arrives at, as long as they get what they're looking for.