The title tag is arguably the most important meta element of each page on your website. It’s crawled by the search engine spiders to help determine what the page is about and appears as the clickable link on a SERP (search engine results page). Unfortunately many website owners are writing poor titles that don’t accurately represent the page or don’t consider SEO. The title is important real estate on the web page and you don’t want to pass up on the opportunities that it provides. Here are some tips for writing quality title tags:
Write a unique title for every page
If the title tag on all of your pages is simply the name of your company, that’s not good! Not only is it not describing the page, but it’s also creating a duplicate issue that is frowned on by the search engines. Each page of your site is different which means that the meta information should be different as well.
Include the right amount of keywords
Some website owners don’t include any. Others go overboard and “stuff” the title with all of the keywords that they are targeting on the site. It’s important to find that happy medium. Include a few keywords naturally in the title that are the most relevant to that page of content.
Put the keywords(s) first
The first few words of the title tag are the most important and carry the most weight. What many businesses make the mistake of doing is putting the brand first and then the keywords (ex. “Furry Friends – Dog Walking Services in Anytown, USA”). Instead, flip it so that the keyword is first (ex. “Dog Walking Services in Anytown, USA – Furry Friends”). The primary goal of SEO is to attract an audience that hasn’t yet heard of your business or brand.
Make it interesting
If the title doesn’t entice the searcher they may gloss over it and not even read the description which is where you really include your page “sales pitch”. The title is the first thing that a searcher notices.
Keep it concise
The search engines only allow for about 70 characters (including spaces) to be seen in the title tag on the SERP. Anything longer than that will get cut off and just look bad. Include only the most important and descriptive information and save the rest for the meta description.