What is a title tag ?
A title tag is essentially the name of the web page.A title tag is an HTML element that specifies the title of a web page. Title tags are displayed on search engine results pages (SERPs) as the clickable headline for a given result, and are important for usability, SEO, and social sharing. The title tag of a web page is meant to be an accurate and concise description of a page content.
The title tag is displayed in the tab at the top of the page when you view it and are they often used on search engine results pages (SERPs) to display preview snippets for a given page. They are very important for search engine optimisation (SEO) and social sharing.
Tips on creating powerful title tags :-
- title tags should be a maximum of 60 characters long, including spaces. Because "Google typically displays the first 50-60 characters of a title tag."
- the most important keywords need to be at the start of your title tag, with your least important words being at the end
- try to use pipes (sometimes referred to as vertical bars) to separate your phrases and avoid using any other form of punctuation such as hyphens, asterisks, or underscores.
- keep your important phrases short and simple.
- put your company name or organisation at the end of the title tag, unless you do not need to include it at all. We include ours for branding purposes and in some instances Google will move your company name to the start of the tag in any event - the SEO value is not diluted in these cases.
Key mistakes to avoid
- not creating a page title at all.
- repeating or spamming keywords (search engines will think you are trying to beat the system and you will be penalised).
- making the titles too long. Search engines limit the number of characters which are displayed in SERPs and if they are too long they are truncated and not read by the crawling robots. Optimal titles should be between 50 and 60 characters.
- giving all of your page titles the same name.
- giving your page the same name as your business or website.
- naming the page without connecting it to your page content.
Examples of poor meta titles
- Chocolate
- Football statistics
- Tax tips
- Vacuum cleaners
Examples of good meta titles
- Chocolate Gifts | Artisan Truffles | Gourmet Chocolate
- Football stats | Team stats | Player stats | Soccer stats
- Five ways to pay less tax | Tips on debt and credit
- Upright | Handheld | Wet & Dry Vacuum Cleaners
Writing SEO friendly titles for search engines can boost your organic traffic to your blogs or websites. Page titles is the one thing that gives more visibility to both search engines and users. If you don’t use them properly, you will end up getting less or zero traffic from Google.
Search engine optimization is the one factor that never gets old. Without optimizing your web pages, no matter how great they are, they won’t rank high in the search results unless you have hundreds of quality backlinks pointing to your pages. This is the reason why new bloggers who are craving for SEO traffic should focus on optimizing their posts.
But here’s the thing, most beginners can’t optimize properly for the search engines. They either end up in writing posts without optimization or doing too much keyword stuffing. Both don’t work if you really want to get top results for your focused keywords.
If I’m asked to choose just one factor out of all on page SEO metrics, I would go for Title Tag which is shown in browser bar when we open a website. When we talk about optimizing a website keeping search engines in mind, the first thing that we look at it is whether our website titles are search engine friendly, if not we look at ways to make them search engine friendly. Lots of people get confused between Page Title and Post Title. Page title is what we see in address bar and post title is what we see within our page content. This post can be considered as a small guide for writing SEO friendly page titles.
Page titles are crawled by search engines and seen by your website readers. Presence of SEO friendly page titles will help your website perform better on search engines. You should write keyword based title tags. But you should make sure your page tiles make sense for your website readers. Visitors will not click on your website page titles in search engines if they don’t understand your page titles properly. So you should draft such titles that are good for search engines and visitors to your website.
Page title is written using tags and placed in header section of a page. Here are top 10 tips to help you write SEO friendly Page titles for your websites and blogs:
Your Page Titles In 60 Characters :-
When writing titles for your website pages, you should make sure they all get finished within 65 characters limit including spaces. Google uses to ignore text written after 65 characters in title tag section. When you type of keyword on Google, if the blog authors don’t use page titles under 65 characters, it gets ignored. It means Google search results won’t show you if the characters are more than 65 in the page titles, so make sure to limit page title under 65 characters to properly optimize your blog posts or other web pages.
Create Relevant Titles For Your Pages :-
You should aim at creating titles that are good for both search engine bots and visitors. Visitors to your website will first see your page titles in search engine results, so make your page titles as per your page content. Google crawlers get confused if you write irrelevant page titles for your web pages, make 100% sure you are writing laser focused headlines for your posts or pages. Writing content and creating irrelevant page titles doesn’t make any sense and don’t give any value to your SEO efforts.
Use Keywords First :-
Want to know the BEST SEO tip in writing SEO friendly page titles? Here you go. Use your primary keyword first. For example, if you are targeting for SEO tips for beginners, there are two instances you can take.
- SEO tips for beginners: How to write SEO friendly page headlines
- How to write SEO friendly titles: SEO tips for beginners
Among the above two cases, you will be more benefited if you use #1. That’s it! So always try using your focused keywords first in your page titles to rank higher.
If you break our page titles into two parts, we should be using keywords for that page into first part. For making search engine friendly titles, your keywords should appear as close to the beginning of page title. But you should make sure; your page title should look sensible in spite of use of keywords. And don’t use too many keywords in your page title tag section. If your title is just a collection of keywords, that would look spammy and no one will click on your website listing in search engines with such titles.
Keywords Repetition :-
You should make sure you are not using the same keyword over and over in your page title sections. Lots of people think that using their main keywords many times in their titles sections will help them top rankings in search engines. But that’s not the case. Don’t EVER use the same keywords on your page titles again and again, Google considers it as keyword stuffing and penalizes your posts for such thing, avoid keyword repetition on your titles.
Make Your Titles Localized :-
If you are aiming at getting higher rankings for certain keywords in certain demographics, you should use them in your page title section. Suppose a SEO company is offering SEO services in particular city like London, should include London in their title tag with keywords for that page. Their Title could be something like ‘Affordable SEO Services in London’.
Use Plurals :-
When even you think of including your keywords in title section, you should be using their plurals. Plurals will make your page title optimized for singular and plural variation of that keyword. Suppose a finance company is offering home loan services to its clients through their website. They should be using home loans in their title tags, as it will make that page optimized for both home loan and home loans search terms.
Different Titles :-
You should make sure each page on your website has different title. It should not be the case same title is used for multiple pages on your website. And tiles for each page should be drafted keeping in mind that page content and their targeted keywords. I have seen lots of website owners copying their home page titles in their website internal pages. You should ignore such practices.
Get Most Out Of Your Website Pages :-
Whenever you start writing an article or blog post for your blog, you should do some search around the keywords people will be using to find your content. There are certain tools like Google Adwords Keyword Tools to help you with your keyword research. You should include those keywords in your page title and content section.
Brand Promotion :-
If you want to promote your brand through your titles, you should keep them towards the end of page title. Generally page titles should be created keeping in mind that page content and not brand name. You can also use plugins like SEO by Yoast to get this done easily. You will also be able to limit your keywords on your page titles under 65 characters using this plugin. A great SEO plugin if you want to get better rankings in Google results.
Use Describing Words :-
You can use some descriptive words towards the beginning of page titles on some occasions to make your website titles look more natural. Instead of using short keywords, focus on LSI keywords on your page titles. LSI keywords often make your headlines more click worthy and give extra weight to your SEO efforts.
Bonus Tip To Create SEO Friendly Titles :-
Write a search engine friendly meta description. Keep in mind that Google users also read meta description of your pages that appear on Google SERPs along with the titles. Meta description is what comes under your page titles on Google search results. By using your focused keywords even on meta description can give you ultimate SEO traffic, so don’t forget optimizing your rich snippets (aka meta description).
Always supplement your SEO friendly titles with a great meta description every time you publish post. This way you can improve your click through rates as well as the user engagement on your sites and web pages.
Keep your meta description under 150 characters, otherwise Google SERPs ignore the remaining extra characters. Write your meta description for the users first, Google obviously gives you top priority then. Never keyword stuff your meta description, or Google may penalizes your posts. Also never forget to test your rich snippets, focus on analyzing your top posts to see which type of meta description is working for you the best. You can use the same templates to create meta description to increase more traffic from Google.
Conclusion:
Before publishing your blog posts, make sure their page titles are under 65 characters. Find and use your focused keywords on your page titles to rank high and use them in the beginning of your titles to get more weight. Never use the same keywords again and again on your titles, it can only worsen your SEO efforts. Use great meta description along with great titles to get more click through rates from SERPs.
Using plugins like All in one SEO pack or SEO by Yoast can help you implement most of the things that are covered in this article. They are free and even SEO beginners can use the suggestions given by SEO by yoast plugin to get more organic traffic to their websites. So start using these SEO plugins to get more traffic and better results from search engines without sweating much.
Over to you: So now you know how to write SEO friendly titles for your website pages. Do you have some tips to help with writing search engine friendly titles, do share in the comments section below, I’d be glad to respond to your comments.