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How does the Title Tag fit into Search Engine Optimization (SEO).

Page Titles for Effective SEO
effectively optimize page title tags in 2024

reading time, about 10 minutes

What Is the Title Tag?

The title tag, as I am sure you can guess is the HTML element which corresponds to the title in the page. You use the title tag to show people and search engines what the page is about. That’s what they should expect your page to contain.

If my page title is ‘Best Running Shoes’, then it’s reasonable to expect the page to tell me which are the best shoes for running. Anything else and it will disappoint a human and, of course, rank poorly with the search engine.

You create one as follows:

<head>
    <title>Your cool Title Tag text</title>
</head>
                

The text goes into the title tag, between the tags themselves and the tag fits inside the head section of the page, as shown above.

The Difference Between a Page Title and Page Headline

This is the source of a lot of confusion. The reason is, that when we speak, we use the same words to mean different things. In this case, we need to make clear the difference between the headline of the page and the title of the page. At first glance, what is the difference?

The title of the page or page title, as you just saw, is the title tag. The headline of the page is known as the <h1> tag. The differences are huge. The title tag sits in the head of the page. The headline sits in the body. In both cases there can only be one.

This means, that the headline is always seen by everyone, as it is the start of the page. It is only seen on the page. The page title on the other hand, can be seen in other places, as we will discuss shortly.

The text that goes into the title and headline tags can be the same or also can be different. This is part of the optimization process.

Where Will You See the Title Tag

You typically see the title tag in one of five places:

  1. Search Engine Results Page (SERP)
  2. Web browser tabs
  3. Bookmarks
  4. Links
  5. Social media

Let’s look at these one at a time.

Search Engine Results Page (SERP)

The search engine results page is perhaps the most important place that your title tag will appear. You will have seen and used these many times on whichever search engine you prefer, such as Google, Bing, Yahoo, Yandex, etc.

There is a bold link, which you can click to visit the webpage. It is this bold link that we are creating with the title tag. There is the address of the website below and below that a description of the website. When done correctly, you can control this description too.

For your title and, therefore, webpage to appear in the search engine results page, someone has to have searched for something that your website can provide the answer to. Now that they have found you, it is vital to encourage them to click that link and visit your website. This is your first chance to impress them. If your title text is compelling to their needs, then they might well click that link and follow through to your website.

While it is easy to create a title and have it show up on the search engine results page, it is another thing to have one that people want to click and visit your website. But, you’re at this website, so you can learn this skill quickly with our resources.

Web Browser Tabs

You will also see the page title in the browser tabs at the top of the browser. Don’t be surprised to see the page title clipped off, or truncated, if you have lots of tabs open.

On a mobile device, the page title will be more visible when you see the list of all open pages, but not be visible when the page is open. This is because there is no tab to view.

A good title tag on the page helps the person to find your page when they are looking for a particular tab within the list of open pages. Imagine if all the pages were named ’home’ for the home page. How would anyone know which home page they wanted? To solve this, use a well branded, unique and clearly identifiable page title. This has the effect of making each tab stand out from all the others.

Bookmarks

Browsers will use the page title as the default name for a new bookmark. You can use this to your advantage once again, by making the page title uniquely identify your page even if there are others in the user’s bookmarks relating to the same topic. You always want your bookmark to be their preference.

When a bookmark is on the favourites bar or another quick access list, it is common for only the first part of the page title to be shown. Therefore, make sure that the beginning part uniquely identifies your webpage and website.

Links

Many automated systems will use your page title, as found in the title tag to provide their idea of what the page is about. This applies to social media just as much as people linking from their own blog or website.

While it is true that you have less or even little control over other people linking your content, it is common to utilize some or all of the words in the page title in the link. This is how it fits more naturally into their website.

Social Media

Social media can be a huge benefit overall in getting your message out. So, it is important that your title tag works in a way that the social media websites like. For example, when a website address (URL) is shared over social media, the platform will lookup that address and show any associated image and text, such as page title and description. Since you are providing all of those elements, you have control over what people see and, therefore, how they will react to your content. Once again, a good page title will encourage people to follow the link, because they know what the page is about.

It is common for social media platforms to allow you more control over the title of your posts. They do this by using an alternative title tag. Once again, you can make a better impression by using this alternative method if you choose.

What Is the Purpose of a Page Title?

The real purpose of the page title, just like the content of the page, is to get people to click on the page, because they think the contents of that page apply to them. This means, that they like the look of your content, the product you are selling or the service you are offering. This means the page title must accurately reflect the contents of your page. If this is true, they will click on the link, go to the page and stay on that page, doing what it is you want them to do. If not, they will click back and move on. If the page title was originally poor, they will pass on by and never click the link.

This implies there are three things you want the title to do for you:

  1. You want it to be your ranking keyword
  2. You want the search engine user to notice your page as relevant
  3. You finally want the user to click the link and visit your page

Get all three of these items right and your page will rank well and perhaps more importantly, it will continue to rank well, because the more people who click on your page, the more relevant Google will consider the page for that keyword. People clicking onto your page increases the chances that others will like the content too.

Do Title Tags Improve SEO Ranking?

The title tag gives the search engine a hint, that is a clue, about what the page is about. If you think about this as a newspaper, then the article headline should and does give you, the reader, a good idea of the contents of the article. The page title tag is the same for a webpage.

You are trying to get the search engine to understand the page, so that your content on running shoes will be displayed when someone is looking for information about running shoes. In this case, it makes sense to appeal to both the search algorithm and to the user, who will both want the same information about the page. In the first case, is this the right page for the search done by the user and in the second case, is this the right page for me to visit.

Keyword Ranking

There’s no controversy in 2024, that a good title tag is essential to ranking well on the search engines. This by no means the whole answer, but if there are ten points you need, then you must do all 10 points.

It does matter but it is not the be all and end all that it once was. But, as this is about the meta title tag, not content creation, we’ll focus on the correct topic.

Getting the exact phrase that was searched for in the title tag improves SERP ranking. However, having the keywords or phrase in the title tags also helps.

It makes no sense to create a page about a topic and not mention that topic in the page title. This has worked for years and will continue to work, remember, this is not just about the algorithm, it’s also about the people, the users.

Make sure that the keyword or phrase is included in the meta title, it is still one of the factors that goes towards your page ranking in the search engine results page.

Click Though Rate

Nobody outside of the search engines knows for sure, but all the evidence suggests that the number of clicks your page gets from the results page, has an effect on your ranking. If you think about it, this makes sense. If other people think this is relevant to the keywords, then it probably is relevant to you too.

If you’ve been following the system here, you will see that by optimizing for both people and algorithms, the click through rate or CTR should naturally be high. This is because we are always thinking about both sets of page users, the person and the machine.

Whether the click through rate is a ranking factor or not, is irrelevant, as you need the human users to come and visit your page. The page title is the reason they will, so even if the algorithm doesn’t use the click through rate directly, it probably does have an influence.

Sharing on Social Media

Once again, the balancing act continues. You need to have a page title that works for SEO (search engine optimization), but also works for sharing on social media. When the social media system visits the page, it will load the page, just like a human would and then extract the important parts. Guess what it thinks is the most important part? If you said the page title from the title tag, then you would be correct.

I have no opinion on the so-called ‘click bait’ page titles, it is obvious that they work. But, remember our rule, the page that follows the page title must deliver the content the page title promised. Just like the newspaper.

To Spark Interest in the Page

The page title, as you already know, is the text that hooks someone into your webpage. In practice, the stats say that most people will not read the whole page. They might read somewhere between 15% to 20% of the page. But what they are doing is skimming. If the page title interests them and they like the beginning of the article or the look of your product page, they will probably read more. That is they engage with the content.

Don’t worry about this, it is not your page is necessarily bad, although it could be, but that they have short attention spans and will probably head off somewhere else and do the same thing.

Your goal is to create a page that delivers on what your keyword said would be on the page and that the content is interesting and engaging.

Use the title to spark interest in the page, it is the first thing someone will see when they search for the topic your page is about. If they like the look of it, they will click through.

Does Google Rewrite Your Title Tags?

The short answer is yes, sometimes it does. The next question then is why does Google rewrite your title tags? The answer here is a bit more embarrassing.

The search engines will rewrite your title tags, if they think the one you provided accurately reflects the contents of the page, that is not relevant, poorly written or provides poor value to the content.

So, if you see your page titles being different in the search engine results page, then you must change them. If you are following through this page and you have made it to here, you are not only one of the few who reads pages, but you will probably have little trouble with getting your page titles shown.

To be clear, the title tags are often rewritten, because those supplied by websites in many cases are non-existent, that means, blank, have something generic, like ‘home’ or ‘top page’. Without rewriting the title tags, Google have stated that their results would be unusable. Of course, once they created a system to rewrite the page title, they can and will apply it wherever they see fit.

Some possible reasons and solutions are in the following sections.

Are You Keyword Stuffing Your Titles?

If you try to keyword stuff your page title, then the search engines will rewrite the title tag. This is sometimes called over-optimisation of the keywords. It provides a poor experience to the web surfer.

Remove the excess keywords and make the page title reflect the contents of the page.

Does Your Title Match The Searchers Query?

If the page title doesn’t match well for the search query, even though the contents might indicate that this should be what the surfer wants to see. Then your page title will be rewritten, and that replacement title shown.

In some cases, this might actually be good for you, as the page title given by the search engine algorithm might be exactly what the user wants to see, and this will help with your click through rate. However, if you are missing out on your preferred or high-volume terms and this is affecting your results, investigate and see how to update the page title.

Is Your Title Clashing With Alternate Titles?

In many cases, you will provide different page titles for social media and for search engines. This is common and normal. However, if the search engines are using your social media page title rather than the one for the page, it will be necessary to make some changes.

This might mean changing the main page title or perhaps the social media titles. Perhaps taking the social media title and using that for the main page title, then creating some new titles for social media. Consider, if say, Google is using the social media page title, then it thinks that is a better choice than the name page title tag text.

What Is the Best Length for a Page Title?

This question seems to cause a lot of worry to people planning their page title. While there is no real limit to how long the page title can be, it makes sense to be practical.

There is a limit to how much can be shown in the browser tab. A limit to how much will be shown on social media and also a limit to how long the text can be on the SERP. In practice, you want to make it long enough to be useful and short enough to not look spammy.

If you’re looking at the desktop results on Google’s search engine results page, then technically it’s 600 pixels. Now, because not all characters are the same width, you have to be flexible on the number of characters. Each character, including spaces and punctuation take up varying numbers of pixels, to make that 600 pixel limit. If you go over this limit, then your title will be truncated, that is cut down, and some ellipsis (three dots …) added at the end to show there is more text, but it cannot be displayed.

So, you want to be under 60 characters, but, of course, a comma is short, and a W is quite long. If in doubt, you can always use our Page Title Preview tool.

Systems like WordPress have plugins that can help with this process, such as Yoast or one targeted at the title tag such as SEO Title Tag. There are plenty of other tools around the web to help with this part of search engine optimization or SEO.

Can the Title Tag and the Heading 1 (H1) Tag Be the Same?

The title tag and the primary heading tag can contain the same text, but they probably shouldn’t. Use the page title tag to show external users what the page is about and use the heading 1 tag to let people know they are in the right place when the page loads.

You should absolutely include your keywords or phrases in the heading, make it a variant of the page title. This gives more prominence to your heading and reinforces the keywords or phrases.

How Do You Write a Good Title Tag?

Now we’ve been through many of the do’s and a few of the don’ts, let’s take a look at how to write a page title tag with a view to making the process easy and something you can do with confidence.

Write for the user, so that when they read the text, it is engaging and enticing to them. Your goal is for them to see your title and description and to then click onto your website. Interesting content and, therefore, titles will have more click throughs than one that is generic or boring. Absolutely appeal directly to your target audience. If they like a particular quirky style, use that, as it will be part of your content and general feel.

This obviously cannot cover all cases for all pages, but it will give you a good head start.

Write for the Target Audience of the Page

The most important thing you can do, is write for the target audience of the page. This is simply sales. Make the page about them and they will engage with the content. It doesn’t matter if you are selling running shoes, handbags or looking for subscriptions. If what you are doing is of interest to the web surfer, then they will engage with your content.

Keep your page titles in line with the feel and tone of your pages and website. If your site is funny, then people should know that from the title. If you’re serious, then make the title tag serious. Let me know what I am getting and then deliver that throughout the rest of the page.

Put the Keyword Near the Start of the Title

Put the keyword or phrase near the beginning of the title tag. This shows the search engine algorithm that these words are important and equally importantly, it means they will not get cut off or truncated in the results.

Manage Title Length

Use the rule of thumb and know that the 600 pixel limit matters, and that means less than 60 characters, including spaces and punctuation. Use a testing tool if you really are worried about it being too long. Try not to waste your characters, that means, don’t use 10 when you could use 50.

Don’t Overuse Keywords

As you’re already writing the title for the human, this should not be a problem. But it is common for people to try to stuff keywords into their page title. An example of this would be repeated use of the same word:

Buy running shoes, Running shoes for sale, Cool running shoes

You get the idea, there is no advantage in putting running shoes into the title more than once and you’ll probably find that your title is rewritten anyway as it is a pretty rubbish title.

Unique Titles for Every Page

This might sound obvious but give each page on your website a unique page title. This helps search engines understand what this page is about and understand how you are adding value to the user. If each page is about a single well-defined topic, such as Page Titles, like this page, then the search engine know that this page is about the page title tag.

Valuable content is something that all the search engines want to show to their users. It makes the search engines more valuable too. This means, that generic page titles, like ‘home’ or ‘top page’ or simply ‘page’, ‘new page’ and ‘untitled’. Then when looking at products, it simply says ‘product’ or for services ‘service’ the use of ‘our’ before any of these will also be a problem.

If you’re using a framework, then that system probably has a structure or two that you can use to name your pages. Choose the one that gives you the best page titles or better still use a plugin to override the defaults and put in the ones that you want.

Remember, the user is interested in the product, so we have two possible structures for products or services for that matter:

  1. Brand | Major category | Minor category | Product name
  2. Product name | Minor category | Major category | Brand

I think it’s clear that if you go down the hierarchy route, the second is better but, in practice, I would advise against both. Create something that is unique and reflects your brand and brand voice.

Make Full Use of Your Brand Identity

Even if you don’t have a well-recognised brand, you should still be thinking about your brand, your brand voice and how that can be placed into the page title tag. As a rule, place your brand at the end of the title. Use a dash ‘-‘ or a pipe ‘|’ symbol.

If you omit your brand the search engines might place it at the end, so you might as well control the look.

An exception to this rule will be the home page. We would not want to see ‘Home – Web Space Designers’ or ’Home – WSD’. It makes no sense and gives the user no idea what the site is about. But, if that was changed to ’Web Space Designers - Your SEO, Web & E-Commerce Specialists’, you have a much better idea of what the website is about and if that interests you, then this is a good page or site to visit.