By John M. Weaver

Have you ever noticed a different phrase in place of your title tag in the Google search results? How is that possible? I thought that the title tag is always the clickable link in the search engine results pages (SERPs). It is true that the title tag is supposed to play that roll in the SERPs; however, this is not always the case. Let me take a minute to explain this little SEO mystery that many people are not aware of.

This situation is most commonly found when users search for a company name. For example, I ran a Google search for “Search Engine Guide” and the title tag was not displayed. The SERPs displayed “Search Engine Guide,” but if you clicked the link you saw that their title tag is “A Small Business Guide to Website Promotion and Increased Search Engine Traffic.” So why doesn’t it display the title tag? The answer is the Dmoz.org directory.

Google uses Dmoz as their open directory, and occasionally they pull replacements for title tags or descriptions for their SERPs. This is exactly why many SEO specialists, including myself, will suggest you choose your words very carefully when submitting your site to Dmoz. The chances of having your Dmoz listing displayed in the results page when someone searches for your company name, as you now can see, are pretty good.

If you are not already listed in the Dmoz directory, I suggest you submit your site for review. I’m sure you have read many of the horror stories about being on the review list for three years, etc. The bottom line is that it is worth your time to submit a well-written listing to Dmoz.org. Good luck!