So if you are following our regular SEO and Online Marketing posts you would already have read our post about if it makes a difference which website platform to choose for your website.
This time we will be talking about the page Title Tag and how to write the perfect one to help your webpage rank as high up on the search engines as possible.
What is a Title Tag?
So lets start with the obvious question of What is a Title Tag?
Most websites are either written in a code called HTML or contain some HTML code to help provide information about the websites page. The Title Tag is a HTML line of code which is designed to explain what the page is about, as the name suggest The Title of the Page.
Why is the Title Tag important?
There are several reasons why the Title Tag is important, here are just a few:
Example of Title Tag in Green
- Search Engines use the contents of this tag to help understand what the page is about and as well as another 200 signals it uses it as part of its ranking algorithm.
- If you perform a search in a search engine like Google or Bing the Title Tag is used as the Title of the website in the search results.
- This is the tag that gets your attention when using search engines.
- It is even displayed in your Browsers Tab!
Example of Title Tag in Browser
Where can I change create one or update it?
Depending on the website platform you are using it can be easy or a little more challenging to find. Every CMS type platform like WordPress, Joomla, Drupal as well as the eCommerce platforms like Volusion and Shopify have a field for every page/product which you can fill in.
If you have a standard HTML website you can enter the following commend in the <head> section of the code:
<title>The title of your page</title>
The problems with Bad Title Tags!
As the Title Tag value is just free text you can write what you like, there isn’t anything stopping you making up some text and putting it in there.
A word of caution, search engines like Google do not like Title Tags that are incorrect for the page. They have a very clever algorithm which checks every Tag to make sure it is relevant to the content of the page. If Google doesn’t think the Title Tag is correct it will simply replace it in its search results with something else, which is something you don’t want.
Duplicate Title Tags
Search engines want to provide their users with quality content that they are looking for, therefore they reward websites which look after their content by ranking them better in the results. One thing search engines don’t like is duplicate content and that also includes the Title Tag. Think of it this way, if the owner of the website doesn’t value the website enough to have a separate Title Tag per page then why should Google value the website?
With that said not all CMS’s make life easy for you and might default a Title Tag value automatically, you might not even know you have duplicate Tags!
Too long or too short
There is obviously only so much space that can be used for this and all Tags, if it is to long it will not help sell your webpage. The example below it wastes space with the website name at the start and cuts off the bit that is important.
Example of a long Title Tag
If however the Title Tag is too short you haven’t really sold your webpage either!
Example of Title Tag too short, probably default Title looking at the name of the site
A little while ago all you needed to do was to make sure your Title Tag wasn’t more than 70 letters long and it will fit the search results. It is however a little more complicated now as Google measures the content of the Tag in pixels. So the letter ‘I’ is thinner than the letter ‘M’, so you should be able to squeeze more I’s into the Tag than M’s.
You could think of a Title Tag value that uses as many thin letters as possible, but to be honest there are plenty of better things to do with your time!
As a rule of thumb try and keep the value of the Title Tag to around 50 letters and numbers.
False Claims!
As mentioned above Google really don’t like incorrect Title Tags, making up incorrect tags will only hurt your website in the end.
Something else to consider too is that if someone clicks on your link in Google thinking they will be presented with a page about the subject in the Title and are not, they will simply press the BACK key and go somewhere else.
It is a very high possibility that Google uses the amount of times visitors bounce off a webpage as part of the ranking algorithm, you want to keep the bounce rate down as much as possible.
How to create the Perfect Title Tag for SEO
So we have gone through all the things you shouldn’t do, now the good bit, what you should do to make the perfect Title Tag.
Here are our tips which we think you should try and stick too:
- ALWAYS write truthful Tags.
- Unless you are not ranking well for your website name do not include it in the Tag.
- Try and start the Title with your main keyword for that page.
- Always write them for the reader, not for SEO. If it look spammy people will not click on it.
- It is your best SALES one line pitch to people looking for your site, make sure you do your best to grab their attention.
- Stay around 50 characters in length.
Here is the Title Tag for this page you are reading:
The Importance of a Websites Title Tag
- Does it have the keyword in there? ✓
- Is it under 50 characters in length? ✓
- Does it grab your attention with an urgent tone (The Importance…)? ✓
- Is it descriptive of the page? ✓
Next time we will discuss How to use Images to help your website rank better. If you have any questions or comments please ask away on our Twitter and Facebook accounts.