Shakespeare started it… a rose by any other name is still a rose, right? This time, maybe not.
It appears that there’s more to a name than ever before, at least when it comes to your website. Did you know that the name of your site (it appears up in the blue window title bar) is very important?
Search engines send out little digital “spiders” – also known as robots – to “crawl” a site to index the site’s content and record that information for use in search querries. Those little spiders and the search engines that rely upon indexes for calculating whether or not your site is listed on a search result pay special attention to certain aspects of a site.
As it turns out, your name is one of those criteria that can really help or hinder your ranking results. It’s one of the first things looked at by crawlers. Webbies (who apparently have a lot of time on their hands) test all of these little details and have found that there are a few things that can help.
1: Do make sure your page has a TITLE!
2: Give your title MORE than your name. Include a descriptive phrase that indicates what you do or who you are.
3: Include the top 1 or 2 key words you need to be located with.
4: Make sure your title reads naturally for humans, too!
5: Hyphens are safer than address symbols such as: colons, periods, forward slashes and commas which can confuse search engines.
6: Limit characters to 45-60 and capitalize important words.
Let’s take our site, for example: go17blue.com
Since our domain (URL) is includes our company name, and our name appears on our home page, to just title the page “17blue” would be a waste. That information is already available.
But to say we develop websites is a benefit. I might want to use the key words “Website Design” Since our target market is largely in “Eastern Carolina” areas, that’s important, too. We providemarketing services to our clients, and that’s a good search keyword for business owners, so I add “marketing’.
A couple years ago, my title was “company name” (ours). It now reads “Eastern Carolina Marketing and Website Design”
Do visitors notice the difference? Probably not. My name and logo are on the page for them to see. Do our prospects find us more easily? YES! Those looking for our services in our area are far more likely to locate our site.
A rose may not be just a rose… It might be a “Fresh Flower Bouquet Delivery Service”
Perhaps today, Shakespeare would change his tune, and his tag.
