Riddle: What is the single most powerful factor for ranking on Google? Hint: It is the first thing internet searchers see from your website, but don't see on your website.

Answer: The Title Tag, which is included in the header area of your website so it never shows up in the website itself. But searchers see it in the Google search results since it is the boldface heading of your listing. And it is indeed powerful — the most powerful ranking factor according to a poll of experienced SEO experts, when it includes the use of keywords. (One could make a very good argument that the most important factor is using keywords in the domain name, but I assume that is water over the dam at this point.)

The last part of the sentence is a key factor in rankings. If you have search terms that people are looking for, then they should show up in the title tags of the pages on your website. It is generally thought that having the search term towards the front of the title tag is even more powerful, although this is a bit more speculative. But don't get too creative. Duplicate title tags among multiple pages on your website are a no-no. Each page should have its own title tag related specifically to the content on that page. And keep the title tag under 70 characters (max – 65) to be completely sure that the end of the title tag will not be chopped off. If the tag is chopped off the search terms no longer count.

Among all the factors in ranking, this might be the most important, but it will NOT provide a top ranking without a lot of other factors acting in concert. Good in-depth content, links from other sites relevant to the topic, headings on the page, lower level content, the position in the overall website – all of these things are important along with about 100 other factors.

The title tag is loosely described as being part of the metadata of the website along with the metatags: meta description, meta keywords, meta robots, meta distribution, etc. I have another riddle, a personal one: Why do people continue to use the meta keywords tag? It has a maximum of zero value (for the last 10 years) and probably less since it allows competitors to see both what you are trying to do and that you don't know what you are doing. It is strange that so many web developers picked up on using it back when AltaVista was the top gun, but never kept up their education as Google has flourished.

If you are into metatags, the meta description is very worthwhile and is a good opportunity to include both keywords and sales info since it appears below the title tag in the Google results. You get a generous 140 characters to make your point. Another useful metatag is the Alt tag which is used to provide a description of a photo in case the photos are not appearing, like for blind people and in some instances related to some browsers. Google uses the alt tag to further weight the seo content of your website.

My last riddle for the day and a hint to next week's subject line: What has links but does not bind and has keys but is never locked? [do�� ��poq u����៱����-||���� :������su��]

To see if SEO is right for your business, contact Jeb at jblair@praxisagency.com.