Writing Title Tags that Search Engines & People Love
In order for your SEO efforts to pay off, you must work on a series of things that are all necessary for optimising your website to make it search engine friendly. Because there’s so much to do, it’s easy to overlook the smaller necessary tasks you may not even know about. One overlooked element of SEO is the writing of page title tags. According to Moz, title tags are the second most important on-page factor in SEO, second only to content.
About Page Title Tags
When you search for something online, you’ll see page title tags which are the headlines on the search engine results page or SERP. For example, if you search for ‘men’s work shoes’ you’ll see one of the top results is from Dickies. The title tag is Men’s Work Shoes & Boots | Dickies. This is what both the search engines and people will see as the title of your page. And because it’s often the very first thing they’ll see, your title tags need to be what your page is actually about.
The text below the title tag is the meta description, which is a short summary
or snippet of the web page. The title tag and meta description works together
to provide a brief idea of what your page is about.
Why Title Tags Matter
Google’s main objective is to deliver results that are relevant to what people search for. In order for it to do that, it has to recognize what different web pages are about. Google puts a great deal of importance on a title tag, making it a key on-page ranking factor. Here are some helpful tips for writing title tags.
Many people think meta titles are so important in 2019 but they would be mistaken. In fact, many of the basic SEO principles which have been around for years are still relevant in some way today. Just ask any SEO company about page rank and if it still matters and you will see that whilst no longer labelled as such, it still plays a part.
Create a Title Tag for Each Page
Each page of your website is unique. This is why each page should have its own title tag that shows the type of information that’s on that page. Google needs to know what the individual page is about and so do online searchers. So make your title tags clear, concise, and accurate.
Stay Within the 50 to 60 Character Limit
Google displays from 50 to 60 characters of a title tag before cutting it of. Therefore, a good character count to shoot for is around 50.
Include a Target Keyword
You should include a main keyword in a title tag and place it in the beginning of the tag to ensure it shows and doesn’t get cut off. When you use a main keyword you’re targeting for that page, you’re sending Google a message that the page is relevant to people who are searching for that term.
Be Descriptive
It’s important that your title tag provides an accurate description of what people will see when they visit your page. If they click on your page only to discover the information on that page isn’t what they expected based on the title, they’ll leave quickly and look for another page to visit.
Showcase Your Brand
If you have a well-known brand, you can add it to your title tag to amp up your CTR or click through rate. Your brand name should be placed at the end of the title.
Don’t Duplicate Your Tags
As stated above, each of your page title tags needs to be unique because every page on your website is unique. If you were to duplicate your title tags, your search visibility will be negatively impacted.