How To Create Perfect SEO Title Tags

The Title Tag and Meta Description are fundamental SEO elements because Google generates snippets from meta tag content. They can have a direct impact on a searcher’s decision to click through to your website.

But, do you know, 70% Of Americans Only Read Headlines Of Articles Before Sharing?

There is a fact that you need to understand is, more than half of the people read your Title Tag than your content. 

There are, however, some guidelines that will assist you in making the most of your tags when it comes to promoting your website.

The Title tags are like business cards, store data on the content of your pages and, when the time comes, share that information with both search engines and people.

You simply cannot ignore title tags if you want to please both of them.
Let’s look at why Meta Title Tags are important in SEO and how to properly use them.

What Is A Title Tag?

A meta tag is data about your data that appears in the HTML code of your pages. Meta tags are used to tell search engines what each page of your site is about.

This metadata is used by Googlebot and other web crawlers to “read” the content of your page and determine whether it matches the users’ search intent.

While Meta Tags on the page are not visible to users, they do appear in the SERPs.

Examine how this search results page reflects each page’s meta title and meta description, for example: 

This means that Meta Tags are intended to address the type of information you want search engines to see, they should also be user-friendly.

Now that you understand what Meta Tags are, let’s see the fundamentals of title tags.

Before that, I would like you to see this. 

Fundamentals Of Title Tag Writing

Each Page Must Have A Unique Title

Both search engines and users will be confused if several of your website’s pages have the same Title Tag.

Consider this: if you use the same Title Tag for several of your web pages that cover different topics—they could even cover the same topic but answer different questions—searchers will be unable to tell them apart and determine which one is relevant to their specific search intent.

In such cases, Google will most likely display a different title in the SERP by extracting text from your content that it believes is more relevant to the searcher’s query.

However, the text that the search engine giant or any other search engine pulls may not be appealing enough to entice people to click through to your website.

The Title Must Accurately Describe What The Page Is About

If you have a website about a restaurant that delivers food all over New York, don’t put “How to Bake a Cake at Home” in the Title Tag. 

The title should reveal the main topic of the page concisely and accurately. Remember that the goal of search engines is to provide searchers with content that is relevant to their search intent.

As a general rule, write for people because they are the ones who read the title to see if it offers a solution to their problem. 

Let me show you with the help of an example:

See this is one of my blogs, “Types of Propaganda Used in Advertising” and you can see the title is accurate as per the content. Also, it is one of the highest ranking blogs of mine. 

Keep Your Titles Under 60 Characters

Search engines truncate long titles to about 50-60 characters, which adds up to 600 pixels—the width of the title in the SERP. This is why it is preferable to consider this limitation when creating the Title Tag. 

Otherwise, searchers may be presented with an incomplete title. So, if you want to be smart about it, create concise titles for your pages and take advantage of the available Title Tag length. 

Check the image below:

Check out this title. The title is under 60 characters and shows perfectly in SERP. 

If you don’t keep your title under 60 characters, it will not be shown properly in SERP. It would have looked something like this.

Put The Main Keyword At The Beginning Of The Title

While you must ensure that your title is readable and clickable, many SEOs agree on one rule: the closer the keyword is to the beginning of the Title Tag, the more weight it has with search engines. 

Here are a few examples:

Cropped Blue Jeans for Women: Skinny, Flared & More [“cropped blue jeans”]

CBD Oil: All the Rage, But Is It Safe & Effective? – WebMD [“CBD oil”]

When you look at the top 10 results in highly competitive niches, you’ll probably notice that this rule applies to the majority of the websites there.

For example, 5 of the top 10 search results for “CBD oil”—a highly competitive search term—use the keyword at the beginning, and three more use it in the middle. 

For example, here you can see that 5 of the top 10 search results for “CBD oil”—a highly competitive search term—use the keyword at the beginning, and three more use it in the middle.

A good tip for making the most of your title is to include two keywords—primary and secondary—in your title (especially if they don’t overlap in words). 

By the way, if you’re unsure about which keywords to focus on and use in your title, our Keyword Search Tool can help.

Navigate to the Keyword Research module, enter a seed keyword, and select the appropriate location. The tool will generate a list of keywords from which you can choose (remember the rule: relevancy, high search volume, low difficulty).

Finally, if there are still characters available, you can add the brand name at the end of the page title. However, as a general rule, do not include your brand term. In most cases, your website will appear in a search for your brand name.

Create Templates If You’re Working With Huge Websites

If you own or manage an online store, you can automatically add product names and distinguishing characteristics such as color, model, and so on to page titles.

However, it is important to note that Google recommends writing informative and descriptive titles and avoiding using terms that add no real value.

However, search engines may not always use your HTML title in the snippet. In August 2021, the SEO community began actively discussing Google’s replacement of the Title Tag with H1 (but other elements can be used as well).

This was the result of Google’s efforts to improve the relevance of the titles displayed in SERPs.

Google says, “When we know the user’s query, we can often find an alternative text from a page that better explains why that result is relevant, using this alternative text as a title benefits both the user and your site.”

However, if you get your page titles correct, your optimization work does not end there.

The meta description tag follows, which allows users to learn more about your page right in the SERP. 

There are several factors to consider when writing the best title tags, which is why we’ve compiled a list of title tag best practices for you to incorporate into your site’s SEO strategy.

Title Tags Best Practices

Optimize Your Title Tag Formatting

Understanding which format works best for Title Tags is the first step in optimizing them. There is no single correct or incorrect way to write Title Tags, but certain approaches have become the norm. 

The format for Title Tags is quite simple; however, there are a few factors that could change that strategy, such as length and the type of pages you’re optimizing.

Using the following strategy whenever possible is one of the most common ways to create a page title:

• Primary Keyword | Secondary Keyword | Branding
• This strategy is concise and makes it simple to target specific keywords.
• According to Google, the best practice for Title Tags is to be “descriptive and concise.”

Because most search queries are only three words long, it is best to target good descriptive keywords that will work best in this format. 

Other options for formatting your Title Tag include keyword mashups. After all, shorter queries receive more traffic, while longer queries receive less. 

Title tags designed for informational pages or blog pages that use long-tail keywords or phrases more frequently to target longer, more specific search queries are other strategies. 

The spiders that crawl and index pages on Google can understand a wide range of characters, letters, numbers, and contextual clues that can help or change the meaning of a Title Tag.

Using characters or punctuation to divide keywords properly can help your SEO while also making your Title Tag less confusing for readers.

Characters such as hyphens (-), ampersands (&), plus signs, straight pipes (|), commas, and periods can all be safely used in Title Tags. It is also acceptable to use punctuation such as exclamation marks and question marks, as these can be helpful to people and are usually ignored by search engines. 

The truth is that as long as it’s honest, accurate, and not too long, there are a few wrong ways to write a Title Tag. However, following these title-tag optimization best practices will give your SEO a competitive advantage.

Some characters and punctuation are ignored by search engines, but others, particularly straight pipes, hyphens, and colons, are read as “delimiters” or intentional ways of dividing keywords. If you want multiple words in the title to be associated with each other, be careful not to overuse these.

Make The Most Of Branding Opportunities

When you use a well-known brand in the Title Tag, it can help increase your CTR. If you can fit it in the Title Tag, you should always try to do so, but even if you don’t have a well-known brand, you can always build one by putting it in your Title Tags.

Brand recognition is important in search because it increases consumer awareness, which helps build trust in your brand.

Google encourages brands and businesses to include branding in their home-page title, though the search engine will usually add it or move it to the front of the title automatically.

Avoid Keyword Stuffing Your Title Tags

Keyword stuffing is the practice of including multiple keywords or keyword variations in your Title Tag. Most people who attempt keyword stuffing include so many keywords that their Title Tag is cut off.

Keyword stuffing not only degrades the user experience but can also harm your search engine rankings with Google and Bing. Because search engines can understand different keyword variations, it is not necessary to include every version of your keyword in the Title Tag.

Google provides a guide on Internet that explains why keyword stuffing can be harmful. There’s no reason to repeat the same words or phrases, and stuffing your titles with keywords can make your site look spammy to both Google and users!

Write Title Tags With The User In Mind

It’s important to remember that, despite your best efforts, your Title Tags are ultimately intended for humans!

The primary goal of targeting keywords in your Title Tags is to reach users who are looking for products or services and guide them to what they are looking for.

When optimizing Title Tags, keep in mind the words or phrases that the searcher is using to find the products you sell.

Even if you have a high SERP ranking, a poorly written Title Tag can prevent you from getting clicks.

Because search engines value the user and their primary goal is to provide the best content to users, considering the user will benefit. 

Aligning your SEO goals with searcher intent and user experience will help you not only reach your potential customers but also become more successful and competitive in the SERP.

This is also why writing misleading, clickbait, or vague Title Tags has little value. If the actual page does not match what the title led people to expect, they will most likely leave.

Furthermore, if your title-tag keywords do not match the on-page content, Google may not rank that page as highly.

This is why, when developing your title-tag optimization strategy, keep the human element in mind. It is most likely that keeping them clear, concise, and written with an accurate keyword strategy will yield the best results.

Example Of Some Of The Best Title Tags

It can be useful to research search listings and see what formats are working for other brands. Here are some great examples of formats, styles, and information you can use in your Title Tags. 

Poway Music Lessons

This title for “what material are guitars made of?” works well because it states explicitly that the content is about the materials used to make guitars. Furthermore, it incorporates the website’s brand name.

This demonstrates to the user that the content is credible because it comes from the music industry.

Britannica

This excellent title would be found by someone searching for “how old is Rome.”

It shows the searcher a variety of resources, letting them know they’ll find everything they need here, such as maps, facts, and points of interest, and the Britannica brand adds to its authority.

Very Well Fit

This Title Tag works well because it establishes credibility by stating that the information is provided by a dietician.

Because the marketer included the keywords “best vitamins for women” in the title, they appear in the browser tab.

Blender Bottle

Blender Bottle has argued that it is the best product on the market with this title.

Furthermore, it ranks first for the term “blender bottle,” an otherwise common term for this type of drinkware that the brand was wise enough to trademark and monetize. 

Groovy Guy Gifts

This title not only contains numbers, a date, and the target keywords, but it also includes a relative price point for the consumer.

Including a starting price point for this buying guide assists users in determining whether the products are within their price range.

Conclusion

To work effectively, search engine optimization relies on hundreds of small elements such as the Title Tag. While some components have a greater impact on a piece of content’s overall ranking, the Title Tag acts as a link between your website and potential customers.

Make your Title Tags clear, descriptive, and representative of your brand and content as a whole. This increases your CTR and allows you to convert users into customers or followers.

Want to see how you’re doing with SEO? Get a free SEO audit right now. Schedule a free 30 minute strategy session to learn how intent SEO can increase search traffic revenue by 100%.