the title tag is your storefront sign, and most say nothing.

The blue link people see on Google is the sign over your door, and most local businesses leave it blank.

Hi,

Walk down any main street and every shop has a sign over the door. Bakery. Barber. Tires. You do not have to go inside to know what they sell. Now look at the sign over your website, because it has one, and most local businesses leave it saying almost nothing.

That sign is the title tag. It is the text in the browser tab and, more importantly, the blue link a person sees when your site shows up on Google. It is the first thing Google reads to work out what a page is about, and the first thing a searcher reads to decide whether to tap. Both of them are looking at the same few words.

Open your own site and look at the tab. If it says "Home", or only the company name, that is a sign with the family name on it and nothing else. People walk past those. Google does the same. It cannot rank you for "electrician Quincy" when the sign over the door does not mention electricians or Quincy.

Say you are an electrician in Quincy. Your title tag today probably reads the name of the company and nothing else. A person with a dead outlet types "electrician Quincy" and gets a page of results. One of them says "Electrician in Quincy, MA: same day repairs and panel upgrades". Another says the name of a company they have never heard of. Which one would you tap? Which one do you think Google shows first?

Here is the fix, and it takes less time than reading this email. The title of your home page should say what you do, where you do it, and then your name. Service first, town second, name last, because that is the order a stranger needs the information in. Every other page gets its own title on the same pattern: the service that page is about, the town, your name.

A few things to avoid. Do not stuff every town you serve into one title, it reads like spam to people and to Google. Do not write it in capitals. Do not let it run so long that Google cuts it off, keep it to about the length of a short sentence. And do not let your website builder fill it in for you, because the default is almost always your company name and nothing else, which is how you got here.

One more thing. The title tag has to agree with your Google Business Profile. If the profile says you are an electrician in Quincy and the site says you are a general contractor in Boston, Google trusts neither as much as it could. The two should tell the same story.

This is the first thing I fix on a site, before anything else, because it is the cheapest change with the biggest effect. The rest of what the site needs to do for Google is on my website optimization page. If you fix only the title tag this week, you are already ahead of most of the businesses in your town.

Talk soon,
Brandon

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P.P.S. If you want me to do it for you, the plan is here: the plan.