People in the field of Search Engine Optimization are known for varying opinions about most SEO practices, but there isn’t much debate about the title tag, because a properly written web page title can literally change your rankings overnight. Several other factors have to be in play, such as having an established and trustworthy site with sufficient links from other web pages, but we have gotten surprising results for several clients with the right title tag.
Also known as the “meta title” by some, titles often have to be explained to novices and new SEO clients. For people using Microsoft Windows, we usually direct people to look at the wording in the browser window to the left of the button that minimizes the page. In many cases the original designer may have used such descriptive titles as “Home,” or “index.html” or the company name in all caps. Since search engines use titles to classify your on-page content, “home” will lump your site in with 208 million sites that use the same word.
How Many Characters?
Normally the first 60 characters in a meta title are important, since search engines like Google truncate the remainder of the title. Note that spaces, dashes, pipes, and ampersands count as characters. You can write longer titles, but should try not to go beyond 120 characters. Remember that the web page title defines the subject, and should be concise.
How to Arrange Keywords in Your Title
The arrangement of keywords in your page title is going to have an influence on search engine positioning. Whether you are doing optimization on a shoestring or a full budget, the homepage title should be about the most general subject matter relative to the site, and the most high volume keyword should be used. You can find high volume relevant keywords using the Google Keyword Tool, or you can use your biggest traffic terms in your sponsored search platform. Normally you can repeat a word or phrase once in the title. If you have a site that sells comic books, you might arrange your best keywords in a format like:
Comic Books Marvel & DC Comics For Sale Graphic Novels
Separating keywords with commas is not recommended, since it may look like you accidentally inserted your keyword list into the title, and you may incur a spamming penalty. On some sites the company name is inserted before the keywords in the title. While there may be a small positive impact by moving the company name to the end of the title, every little bit helps in the world of SEO.
Preventing Keyword Blurring
A full scale SEO project will involve unique meta titles on as many pages as possible. This actually involves careful planning, since similar or identical title information will keep search engines from selecting the best page. If Google sees several pages with the same category information, it will either try to pick the best one or it will give them all a lower placement than any single page would have gotten. For the comic book example, you would have more specific information on category level pages (“Spider Man Comic Books”) and detail pages (“Amazing Spider Man #37 – Spidey Tangles With a Robot.”) This type of detail helps a search engine create a hierarchy, and increases the number of site pages that match up with specific customer searches.
Another cause of keyword blurring in titles involves default titles that are defined in shopping carts and content management systems. If you are unable to create unique titles for multiple pages, making the default title into something generic (like your company name) can prevent blurring.
Dynamic Title Insertion
Have you got several thousand pages on your site, or multiple products for sale? If people are searching for items by part number, dynamic keyword insertion into your title can dramatically improve your exposure and sales volume. This requires some programming, since you are effectively inserting a variable (most likely your short product description) into the title tag. Most often, you will want some static text to go along with the dynamic text, so the code would look like:
[part number] Printer Ink Refills – Inkjet Replacement Cartridges
Depending on whether your page code is PHP, ASP, or Cold Fusion, this would be an “echo” command or a similar method of writing the code and rendering it as HTML. You may also want to see if your CMS or shopping cart has a plugin that does this for you.
Agreement with Page Content and Links
Anything that goes in your title should be reflected on the actual page. Search engines want to match up titles with content, which still has a high value to most search algorithms. One warning is that your header (h1) tags should not match the title exactly, or the page may get filtered for over-optimization. Similarly, links to your page should contain anchor texts that match up with title elements, but naturally the link texts themselves should be carefully mixed to prevent problems. If you have an entire batch of anchors that match up with the first phrase in the title, then you may encounter problems. As always, an experienced SEO company can advise you on page optimization.
Conclusion
The value of web page titles cannot be underestimated in the world of SEO. A well known survey of search engine optimization experts showed that the title is still the most important consideration in on-page optimization. Although the title should not be the only thing you do for your website’s SEO profile, it is one factor that will prevent your site from ranking if all other best practices are already in place. We have seen multimillion dollar companies with atrocious page titles, and they were getting beaten by mom-and-pop shops with better optimization. Anyone trying to grow a website’s online presence should consider the status of all the web page titles on their site, and how much traffic that good titles can bring.
Note: We have a meta tag generator that turns text tags into HTML code that can be pasted onto a site. To use this as a title generator, the other fields can be left blank.