Many of the common mistakes or omissions made when designing a website are basics that any SEO expert will instantly recognize.  Most of the time the designer of the website just didn't know any better.  Sometimes they're little things that a lot of us could easily overlook.  Before you pay someone hundreds or thousands of dollars to give your website a search engine-friendly makeover, check for some of the common stuff yourself.

One of those common omissions is the title tag.  The title tag, which looks like this <title>Some interesting title</title>, is the part of the HTML code for your website that determines what appears at the top of the web browser when people view your website.  If you look at the top of your browser window now (and I mean all the way at the top), you'll see it says "Search Engines Aren't PC - They'll Judge A Site By Its Title" (or "Internet Marketing Monitor", depending on the page). That's what appears between the title tags for this page.

Search engine crawlers read those title tags and not only use them to name your pages on the search engine results page (SERP) but they also extract keywords from the title and use them in the process of determining your rank on the SERP.  If neglected, the title tags are a huge SEO opportunity gone to waste.  If you use authoring software to create your websites, that software might insert its own titles.  Maybe you've just never paid much attention to them before.

Brandon Cornett, writing for the Internet Search Engine Database, has an excellent post illustrating the importance of properly worded titles.

According to Cornett, a SEO consultant in Austin, Texas, it was possible to double the search engine traffic to one of his client's websites just by adjusting the title tags on the website.  While Cornett focuses on older websites in his post, the technique is just as important for brand new websites as it is for those having been in existence for years.

Cornett makes a great point about the benefits of title tag optimization:  they help increase search engine visibility AND human readability.  What is a better explanation for visitors to your site:

1) Peanut Brittle
- or -
2) 6 Different Recipes to Make Peanut Brittle

The first one could simply be a website with a definition of peanut brittle… or pictures of it… or it could be about a new up-and-coming band called Peanut Brittle.  There's just no way to know for sure.  But with the second option, you know exactly what the page is going to be able.  And people looking for that are going to search for "how to make peanut brittle" or "recipes for peanut brittle" so your site is going to rank much higher with descriptive, "keywordy" titles.

Search engines are built around the same principle as human viewing if you think about it.  If the search engine isn't sure your website is relevant to a search, it might still throw you into the SERP.  But you'll never rank as high as you could because the search engine just isn't sure.  As search technology continues to improve, relevance is going to play an even bigger role in the building of SERPs.

Take advantage of the little things that you can do in-house before investing in expensive SEO.  Title tags are one of the easiest and most cost-effective changes you can make.

If you wouldn't read a book without a good title, why would you read a website without one?