Title Tags - Page Title Tag

One of the most important on-page optimistion factors for SEO are your title tags. The title tag is the description that appears at the very top of your screen (on the same row as the minimize / maximize / close screen) icons appear on the top right hand part of the page. Making effective use of your title tag can have a huge influence on your search engine rankings as it is the first signal to Google of what your article is about.

Quick Recap - if you have not already done so, quickly read our article on how Google works as this will be useful in understanding the following content.

So, if the above holds true and Google looks to rank highly websites that are relevant to the keywords the searcher is looking for, then we need first of all to write an article which fulfils this criteria and then we need to communicate to Google what our page is about.

How to Use Title Tags

One of the ways we can tell Google what our page is about is by using title tags effectively. This is a very important SEO tool so should not be ignored. Fortunately, only a small percentage of people use this tool correctly, so this is an area where you can gain a major advantage on the majority of your rivals in the race to get to the top of Google.

Theere are two common mistakes people make when assigning your title tag. The first mistake is that they use the same title tag (normally the blog name) for every page on their blog. As we have identified that the main criteria for ranking well is relevancy then using the same title on every page is clearly not good for SEO.

For example, lets assume that you are maintaining a blog on Playstation 3. On your main page, you write about the console itself, giving details of prices, hardware, manufacturer specifications, etc. You decide to make your title tag “Playstation 3 console.”  In this case - it is perfect because it is short, sweet and keyword relevant to the content of your article. People searching Google for information on the Playstation 3 console would find your site useful, so Google in return will want to rank your page highly.

However, lets say you create a sub-page about games for the Playstation, specifically FIFA 2009. Using “Playstation 3 console” as your title tag is no longer relevant, as your text will be about the game, not the console. Therefore, the chances of your sub-page ranking highly are slim. To improve their chances of appearing high up google for the phrase FIFA 2009 you should consider changing your title tag to “FIFA 2009 - Playstation 3″.

Hopefully, the above illustrates why we must change our title tags for every single page we create - choosing a tag which is relevant to the content of the article. On a much more extreme example, an amazing number of websites simply use their blog name for all pages of their site, including their main page, ie. “John Doe’s Blog”. Given how important the Title Tag is for SEO, clearly this is something we want to avoid!

Optimal Length of Title Tag

The second common mistake people make is to include a long list of keywords in the page title, hoping that this will mean they will rank well for a wide range of search phrases. Sadly, it isn’t that simple. Unless you are writing a niche article hoping to rank highly for long-tail keywords then you should keep your title tags short and sweet. This is because Google provides a weighting on each word in the title.

Therefore, if your page title is “Playstation 3 Console” it will rank much higher than if your title is “Playstation 3 Console - Games, Controllers, Accessories, Steering Wheel, Cheats, Reviews, etc” because the additional words added to the longer title have diluted the impact of your main keyword. As you have added a long list of keywords, you have now confused Google as to what your page is about, so be careful only to include the most relevant keywords in your title tag.

How to Write the Perfect Title Tag

There are two ways you can do this depending on your writing style. The first is that you can write your title tag before starting to create your article. This then sets the subject for your blog post so you should then base the content around this subject. Alternatively, you could write your article and then shape your title tag based around the main theme of the keyword your article is focused on.

The most important thing is that your title tag must match the content of your article. Relevancy is the key to achieving high rankings in the SERPs. Don’t try and trick Google by giving a title tag that is irrelevant or only loosely relevant to your article content - it won’t work. Instead, focusing on writing quality, relevant content and soon, traffic and high rankings will follow.

Quick Tip - In the above example, if you feel “Playstation 3 Console” is too short, you could include additional relevant information in the title tag, but if you do this, I would recommend including your main keyword for a second time, for example “Playstation 3 Console - Playstation 3 Information”. Although there is much debate on the issue, there would appear to be some benefit to structuring your tag in that manner.

The other thing to consider when writing your title tag is that Google places more weight on the first words so you should look to start (where possible) with your keyword. As an example, “Playstation 3 Console Information” would be far more effective than “Information about the Playstation 3 Console”.

A final pointer would be to say that words such as “and, the, of, it” and many other small, stop words are ignored by Google so you should omit them where possible. If you feel you need to incorporate multiple themes in your title tag, you should use the hyphen symbol instead of and to avoid diluting your main keywords, ie. “Playstation 3 Information - Guide - Reviews”.

Summary

In this article, we have looked at the importance of the title tag in your SEO campaign. We have analysed the most common mistakes people make when writing their page titles, as well as looking at how to structure your page title. We have also examined the importance of relevancy and keyword proximity. Here is a quick checklist of the main points:

• The title tag is one of the most important on-page SEO factors, but is largely ignored by many users.
• You should write a new title tag for every page on your website.
• The page title should be relevant to the content of the specific article, NOT your overall website.
• Your title tag should be short and sweet so as not to dilute the emphasis on your keywords.
• Your keyword should appear at the beginning of the title to emphasise it’s importance