Writers like to be clever, because that's an important part of the job – coming up with witty ways to say something that's been said before. After all, Shakespeare reused plots that had been around for hundreds of years, but he did it in a new way. (In fact, 1,700 of the words used in his collected works were first used by him. Shakespeare would have had a hard time attracting searchers by using words and phrases that no one had ever heard of before. Good thing he stuck to play writing and never tried his hand at web content.)

For title tags, it's usually a good idea to leave the cleverness out of it, and stick to this Shakespearean motto: "Brevity is the soul of wit." Here are five ways to improve the results of your titles.