• First and foremost title tags are very important from the search engine point of view. This is because all major and minor search engines place much weightage on these tags (and use these tags to gather information about an website) in comparison to all other aspects
• Secondly many major search engines like Google and Yahoo! display title tags of a web page as a heading in their SERPs (Search engine results page) followed by a breif description of the content were the keywords appear.
• The third most important function of title tags is to help the user in finding out which page he is on. Almost all popular browsers including Microsoft Internet Explorer, display title tags on the top bar as well as the bottom. Firefox 1.0 uses title tags to describe 'tabs'. This makes title tags extremely important from the web usability point of view as well.

Optimizing title tags to get search engine visibility
Title tags are most important when it comes to search engine optimization as all major search engines including google place much importance on them. In fact title tags are used by search engines to gather information about a web page. So it is a matter of logic that if the title tag does not match the content of the web page then the search engine may not give the page any ranking at all! As title tags and the web page content are two inseperable things it becomes a necessity to understand the webpage content (or what the webpage is all about) before finalizing on the title tag text. (It should be noted that title tags are specific to a single web page and not to the entire website). So it would be logical to assume that title tags should be written based on the webpage content.

Title tags and web page content
The onpage content of the webpage is also as important as the title tags and should be optimized properly. There are many factors that need to be taken care of while optimizing webpage content like keyword research, analyzing keyword density, keyword location, headings tags, anchor texts etc.

Basically the one thing which should be common between the title tags and the content of a webpage is the keyword. The challange here is to find that important keyword from the content. Here's where proper keyword analysis comes into the picture. A proper keyword research should help a person in identifying the primary (most important keyword to be used in the title tags, heading tags, alt tag etc.) and secondary keywords (keywords which can be used additionally). In addition to using the primary keyword as the title, it also makes sense to keep the title as descriptive as possible. This can be done by adding one or two additional words to the keyword making it unique and descriptive. Using a descriptive title will improve the click-through rate in addition to making the webpage more usable. The best way to go about it is to use the same keyword or variation of the same keyword in the url, webpage content as well as the title tags of a webpage.

Mistakes to avoid while optimizing title tags
1.) Loading the title tag with keywords
This is a major mistake as using lots of keywords would dilute the effect of the title. A title tag can provide the maximum advantage only if it focuses on a specific keyword which is most important as far as the webpage is concerned. In addition to this, loading titles with keywords makes them look unprofessional and difficult to understand reducing the click through rate. Keyword repetition in title tags is another factor that needs to be avoided.

2.) Using keywords in the title tags that do not appear in the content
Search engines place much important to title tags and treat them as a word that describes the entire webpage. If the title tag uses a keyword that appear's nowhere within the content then the actual meaning of title gets lost. This is the reason why it becomes important to ensure that the title tag corresponds with the content of a webpage.

3.) Using title tags that have no meaning or are not descriptive
Title tags should be keyword specific, but at the same time they should also convey some meaning. In many cases using descriptive title tags have helped webmasters get better click-through rates even when their page was at the very bottom of the results.

Many users bookmark a page by adding it to their long list of websites on their favorites menu. Almost all broswers use the title of a webpage as the title of the bookmark. So in case of a descriptive title the webpage will stand apart from the rest enabling easy sorting and access. In addition descriptive keywords also help the user in finding out which page contains what? For instance, if a person opens ten webpages in ten separate browser windows, then it is the title of these pages that helps him decide what each page is all about enabling easy browsing.

4.) Using the same title tags for all pages on a website
Title tags are webpage specific and need to be decided based on the webpage content. Hence as the all webpages cannot contain the same content all webpages should never display the same title. Titles make sense only if they are webpage specific. Webpage specific titles help in improving the web usability and also help from the search optimization point of view.

5.) Not making use of proper capitalization
Using all caps or all small letters in title tags is not advisable. A title tag appears at its best when it makes use of title caps. This means the first letter in each word begins with a capital letter following by small letters. For instance, 'Find Discount Hotels In Florida'

6.) Not giving attention to the length of the title tags
The length of the title is also very important, though many webmasters tend to ignore this, t. According to W3C the title of a webpage should ideally be less than 64 characters in length (Reference: http://www.w3.org/Provider/Style/TITLE.html). This also makes lots of sense as titles that contain more than 65 characters are generally truncated by search engines making them loose meaning.