Title tags are still an incredibly powerful aspect of your on-page SEO and getting them wrong can be as damaging as a pitbull in a china shop.

It really is one of the few things that can make or break your rankings overnight, so getting the most out of your title tag is essential.

Here are a few pointers:

• Make sure your keywords are in your title tag
• Make sure each page has a unique title tag
• Add your most important keywords as early as possible in the tag
• Cut the bloat! Remove ‘stop’ words like and, for, is, are, etc. These dilute the power of your keywords.
• Use the pipe symbol (|) to separate title content

So, here is an example of a poor tag (assuming the targeted keyphrase is ‘monkey food’):

"Visit MonkeysRUs today and buy our extremely pleasant monkey food"

And here’s how it should look:

"Monkey Food | MonkeysRUs"

*Note, it is optional to use your brand name in the title (this will diliute the keyword power slightly), and this decision should be based on your own current ranking situtation.