What is the Page Title Tag?

The Title Tag is the "Topic" of a page in your website. The Title is seen by searchers both in the top of your browser window and also the Title is the top line in the search results for any website followed by a brief description. For the user experience the title needs to accurately describe the page.
Search Engines like Google read the Title tag to determine the Topic of your page and it is important to keep it quite brief and VERY accurate.

The Title Tag is one of the most important factors in achieving high search engine rankings.

Simply by improving your website Title Tags you can often generate much better search results and improve your traffic and visits to your website.

Title Tags help Search Engines

You could argue that the Title Tag is the most important of the top three factors for helping your site become Google Friendly. The Copy or text in your site and also the number and quality of incoming links from other sites are also in the top 3.

My Company Name in the Title Tag?

Absolutely and possibly at the beggining. Branding is a large part of Internet success. However don't have only your Company Name, Google does not care what your company is called, "it" wants to know what your website is all about and as previously mentioned the Title tag is a big part of that goal.

Title Tags Should Contain Keyword Phrases

For example TLD sells domain names and also offers a range of other website and internet services. We want to be found for "Domain Names For Sale" and phrases like "Keyword Domain Names" our home page Title Tag is:

Domain Names For Sale | Keyword Domain Names | New Zealand Domain Name | TLD.co.nz
 

Some would say this is slightly long and yes our brand is at the end. This works though as i am taking advantage of the "NZ" in the domain name (Brand) to be picked up by Google as an alternative to "New Zealand" See The New Zealand Domain Extension Advantage article

For other pages in our website we want to rate well for the topic or subject on that page. It is important to keep it relavant, but don't stress to much as there is no such thing as a perfect Title tag. Each version will help you rate for different keyword phrases and some will get more click through from people that others. The Title Tag should be written to suit readers not search engines; however if you plan it carefully you can achieve great search engine results and also tell the searcher exactly what they need to know.