The most important element that you have instant control over when it comes to search engine positioning and optimization is the "title" tag on each of your web pages.

Everyone talks about this and I have even had people come to me and say "yeah, I know that, that is so basic" and then you have a look at their site and all their title tags are the same !

So what does a title tag show you ?

Well for a start it is still used to rank pages. You need to have your main keywords in this title. Not loads of keywords but the most important for the page you are developing.

You need to ensure that the title tag is completely different on each of your pages.

What Google will certainly do if all your title tags are the same is to mark your site as all the same and wham! you have duplicate content penalty across your site.

And if you think about this it makes perfect sense. The title is a very brief summary of what is on the page in question. So if you have titles that are all the same then for a computerized search engine they will think every page is about the same thing.

What else can they think?

Even for MSN and Yahoo, sometimes they will not rank your page for your keywords unless they are in your title tag.

so pay special attention to it !

About the Author

Peter Hale is a seasoned internet marketer having been online since 1996 -- Peter takes a special interest in search engine positioning and how it helps generate thousands of visitors per month. His SEO blog talks about his SEO services and his SEO video tutorials show you how to get 500 visitors a day from the search engines.