On Page Optimisation – The Title Tag

OK, so with the overall introduction to SEO and the main two “categories” explained in the post So What is SEO? I thought it would be a good idea to break down the various elements of on page optimisation in easier to manage chunks.

I’m all about trying to do things in a logical order, so what better way to start by checking out the Title Tag?

As mentioned previously – this is the information that is found at the top of your browser window and should be used to distinguish your site from anyone else’s. Not only that but it gives you a helping hand when it comes to optimising your site.

A while back, the title tag was a very powerful element in the ranking factors but nowadays its not as powerful but should still be used correctly in order to gain as much out of it as possible.

There are two reasons for this:

1. It still does help in SEO, so why not do it? Every little helps!
2. It helps people see your listing amongst a sea of others and should be used to entice the click – so again, why not make the effort to make your listing appealing to searchers?

For those unsure, here is a demonstration of the title tag in action when searching in Google:

Search Result for "mens t shirts"

As you can see, whatever search term is entered – Google bolds the keyword used in the title and the description underneath (Meta Description) I think it would be worth covering the Meta Description and Meta Keywords in a separate post.

Now if you were a searcher and a listing had the keyword (bolded) that you searched for and was nice and descriptive and included a Call to Action – would you be tempted to click on it? I thought so. Next time pay attention to what results you choose when you search for something.

OK – so what do you include in the title tag? Well that depends on the page. One thing is for sure, you should have a unique title for every page – don’t get lazy on this. It’s very important!

Why? Well for one, not all of your pages are going to be relevant to every search term people may use, so therefore you suffer slightly on the SEO factors and that searchers aren’t as likely to click on your result.

Secondly, duplicate content on your site is a big issue and something the search engines do not favour. By having the same title tags all over the place, you are contributing to more duplicate content and that could hurt (think falling over and grazing your knee).

Also, don’t think you can get away with keeping the same title and changing some parts of the title for each page. Although better than not changing it at all, if you are able to – change the whole thing for each page.

What Does The Title Tag Look Like?

Well from an HTML point of view it is as simple as:

<title>Hey everyone – this is a title tag</title>

It’s as simple as that. As to how/where to edit it, it really depends on what you are using to edit your pages so I can’t really go into that I’m afraid.

What Should I Have in My Title Tag?

Well I would say your primary/main keyword for that particular page should be in there – preferably towards the beginning. This ideally should be followed by something descriptive and if you can fit it, a call to action.

Check out this result for “men’s t shirts” and see how they have structured their title tag. I think it’s structured pretty well and compelling to click on. It’s good they managed to squeeze the brand name in too so immediately you know who you’re dealing with.

If you think of this type of structure you cant go far wrong, so print it out and frame it.

How Long Should it Be?

Well there is no set “rule” although the search engines have different character counts that they display and count, so it really does depend.

From a personal point of view – I stick with what Google displays, as that is likely to be where most of your search traffic comes from. Although they recognise more, 70 characters is a good number to aim for, as this will display your whole title tag on the page instead of cutting it off with three dots…

You could have up to 120 characters which is a lot more and that would be displayed fully on Yahoo. In my opinion, the only reason you may actively want your title to be cut off in Google is to increase curiosity by making the title cut off in such a way, people want to find out the rest of it and in turn click on your result.

OK, so now there is no excuse to have pointless titles like “Welcome”, “Home”, or even the dreaded “Untitled Document”.

Don’t be shy – Get your titles out!

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• Dangers of Duplicate Content for SEO (2)
• On Page Optimisation – Meta Description and Meta Keywords (2)