Title Tags: A badly written title will sink your site

[indianboy]

Let's not forget the idea that the Title tag not only serves an SEO function, but also serves a selling function.
Your title needs to be keyword rich and search engine friendly in order to pull those top rankings, but it also has to be intriguing enough to entice searchers to click on it. I view the Title tag as a site's first chance at conversion.

That said, I tend to go with slightly longer titles, in other words, my Titles are rarely JUST the keyword phrase that the page is optimized for. I'm on the side of

"Purchase Discounted Red Widgets"

rather than

"Discounted Red Widgets"

It depends on the phrase, the purpose of the site, the context of the page, etc... Sometimes, depending on the page and the engine, your description will work well enough to convert the searcher to a purchaser, but other times, you'll need to rely on your Title tag to do this. So, I tend to pay equal amounts of attention to the marketing AND SEO purposes of a title tag.