There are so many things that you can do to increase search engine rank, but if you don’t nail the title you’re probably wasting your time. The title of your page is the most important factor that search engines use to determine what your page is about. That makes a lot of sense, since the title usually sums up a page in a single phrase or sentence. Your title really should tell the world (and the search engines) what your page is about.
Alright, so we know that we need a good title in order to rank well, but what makes a good title? A good title is one that targets the exact word or phrase that you would like to rank for. It’s folly to think that you are going to put up pages that will rank very well for a large number of keywords. In some cases that might happen, but in reality you will want to identify a specific keyword phrase that you want your page to rank for and concentrate on optimizing for that. You will have much better success trying to increase search engine rank if you zero in on a single keyword for each.
Once you know what you are trying to rank for, simply name the page exactly the same as the keyword. If you want to rank for “Natural Dog Food”, name your page “Natural Dog Food”. Or in the case of this page, “Increase Search Engine Rank” was the phrase that is being targeted. Try to put your keyword first in the title, as this is often considered more relevant than words farther in.
You might have noticed from the title of this page that there is more than just the keyword included. The second half of the title is targeted at the human audience rather than the search engines. It’s there to give more context about what will be found in the article, and to add some interest while browsing the list of search results. It’s fine to include additional content in the title; just make sure that your search phrase appears exactly, and prefer for the keyword to appear first.
There are a million other tweaks and tips for getting your page to the top of the search results, but never forget that the foundation of any plan to increase search engine rank is to pick the perfect title.