For SEO, there is a cascading effect from external inbound links, through the title
tag, h1
tag, and description
tag and so on. While you do not always have control over the inbound links, you have control over on-page optimization so here goes:
Your title
tag should be a short and unique title of each page. It should be succinct and optimally limited to about 50 characters if possible to control how it appears in the SERPs and that it will be used rather than having Google pick a new title when the title
tag is too long.
Your h1
tag should differ but be related to the title
tag. It should be longer than the title
tag and should be conversational meaning sentence like. Your title
tag can also be conversational, but the h1
tag should be longer if even only slightly. Never duplicate the title
tag in the h1
tag. It is optimal from an SEO perspective to only use one h1
tag. You can use more than one, however, to avoid confusion, one h1
tag is best.
Your description
meta-tag should be related to your title
tag and h1
tag. It should also be conversational but even longer yet. Optimally, it should take 2 lines in the SERPs if possible.
When looking at the SERPs, you should see the title
tag used as the link and the description
meta-tag as the snippet using a site:domain.tld
search. As searches occur, Google may change the snippet, but should always keep the title
tag as the link if done right. Both should be tuned to grab the attention of the user and entice the user to visit your site and read your content.
For each, the title
tag, the h1
tag, and the description
meta-tag, you want to utilize your most important keywords for each page. Within the h1
tag and the description
meta-tag, you should be using your secondary related important keywords. Your keywords, as much as possible, should be used from left to right first in the order of importance. This means that as the search engine parses these tags, it will see your keyword importance from left to right and that the keywords are used first as much as possible. Of course, you do not want to list keywords. Search engines can see word lists and will reject them outright, but used naturally in a conversational way.
Your most important keywords should cascade from link
->title
tag->h1
tag->description
meta-tag->top level content
. Your secondary keywords should cascade from link
(where possible)->h1
tag->description
meta-tag->top level content
.
This is the general formula for good performance in search engines. Make your tags conversational and do not keyword load your tags. Also, do not appear to be listing keywords. Search engines are looking for honest and natural uses of tags and content. If you are following that rule, you will out-rank everyone for the keywords that naturally exist within content. Today, and especially with Google, search engines are rewarding tags that appear not to manipulate keywords but are made for humans. I have tested this and I assure you that search engines, and especially with Google, your pages will perform properly and that keywords that appear deep within your content will be found.
I have not covered content. If you use other header
tags, order your content and optimize your header
tags from top to bottom in the order of importance especially keyword importance. Simply placing a header
tag and paragraphs higher within the content, will raise the importance of what is found within them.
To answer your question specifically: You do not want too much repetitive content in your tags from page to page. You can brand your title
tag with your domain name of course. You would likely do this at the end of your title
tag. I do not suggest using a slogan. This is because you will be pushing out/down the important keywords for each page. You can use a slogan, I just do not recommend it. This would mean that your pages would unnaturally rank for your slogan and not for what they should rank for. If you do use a slogan, perhaps the description
meta-tag would be the best place. SEO wisdom is not to dilute the performance of any page and to ensure that search engines know how to index and serve each page in the SERPs. Remember that most SEO advice found on the web is parroting bad advice and me too
discovery de' jure
bloggers who often do not have a full grasp of the internals. Most of what is a year old or more will get you into trouble so be careful.
I hope that helps you plan your work!
<span>
or<div>
. W3C introduced<hgroup>
for the use of two headers but it was quickly removed and was widely agreed that a tagline/slogan isn't a header. You should also avoid using<p>
as this implies a paragraph of text which a tagline/slogan is most likely shorter which will make it more ideal in div or span.