Placement The page title tag should within meta tags in the <HEAD></HEAD> of a document Example <HEAD><TITLE>Your title goes here</TITLE></HEAD> Rules Page title optimization tips 1) 2-3 Keyword phrases (max) on a single page 2) Title Should be 40-60 characters max 85 Chars 3) Avoid irrelevant words (ie phone number, url, brand) 4) Avoid repeating Keyword phrase parts back-to-back (ie "Free SEO Guide | SEO guide") 5) Use Keyword phrases relevant to your page's content, avoid phrases the content can't support 6) Use the exact target phrase at least once, at the beginning of the page title Optimized page title examples Bad Title: "<<<=====www.dive-andaman.com ===>>>>" "Welcome to www.dive-andaman.com" Better Title: "Free SEO Guide from www.dive-andaman.com" Best Title: "Free SEO Guide" "Free SEO Guide | Free Online Guide to SEO"
Sorry, but I have to disagree with: One of your own examples violate this... It's 14 characters long... You cannot state general, broad statements like "Title Should be 40-60 characters max 85 Chars" and expect it to be true. Your <title> element should be as long or short as is necessary to spell out the targeted keyword phrase. If my page is targetting "car loan" then 8 characters is PERFECT. If I am targetting "bat" then 3 characters is PERFECT. And as far as: This is not necessarily true either... You cannot state things like this as fact when you actually have no clue which is better. Did you research both keyword phrases and determine which has the most keyword searchs? did you perform the following searches at Google to see which are more competitive? "Free Online Guide to SEO" "Free Online Guide to SEO" intitle:"Free Online Guide to SEO" "Free Online Guide to SEO" inurl:"Free Online Guide to SEO" "Free Online Guide to SEO" intitle:"Free Online Guide to SEO" inurl:"Free Online Guide to SEO" "Free Online SEO Guide" "Free Online SEO Guide" intitle:"Free Online SEO Guide" "Free Online SEO Guide" inurl:"Free Online SEO Guide" "Free Online SEO Guide" intitle:"Free Online SEO Guide" inurl:"Free Online SEO Guide" Did you weight the search query volume against the competitiveness of the keyword phrase? You might just find that no one searches for Free Online SEO Guide compared to Free Online SEO Guide. Or you might find that while Free Online SEO Guide has 10x the search query volume at Google that you have absolutely no chance of ranking for that phrase because there are thousands of other sites out there that have Free Online SEO Guide in the page content, the title, AND the URL. In other words... thousands of other sites that are trying HARD to rank for that phrase... While Free Online Guide to SEO might have 1/10th the search query volume of Free Online SEO Guide, you might find there is only 3 pages that have that exact phrase in their content, title, and URL... That means there is hardly no one competing for Free Online Guide to SEO and you can likely rank for it with little or not link development work. I would rather rank on page 1 for a keyword phrase that brings me 10 visitors per month than to rank on page 5 for a keyword phrase w/ 100x as many searches but brings me ZERO visitors per month because it's impossible for me to get to page 1 without 10s of thousands of links. As with most things in SEO, there is no ONE way that is right. The effectiveness of any technique and when/where they should be used ALWAYS depends on the situation. What is good in one situation might be a terrible idea for another.