Why starting with title tags?
Well, it is just symbolic.
A long time ago in a search engine galaxy far far away, one of the best ways to proclaim what was your site about was to put a bunch of keywords that best described the content in your site’s meta keywords tag. That would have been a perfect solution for determining relevance of web documents if it weren’t for human nature.
Yup, you guys found a way to abuse the keywords meta tag and you couldn’t stop. Until those tags became a part of SEO history. May they rest in peace.
Now, when it comes to determining relevance, search engines rely on title tags more than any other onsite factors. And I am guessing that, by now, you understood the importance of title tags, cause if you don’t I am worried about you.
That was a joke, I don’t really care about how deep is your understanding of title tags at this point. I might pretend to care at the end of the document.
There are two very important points that I would love you to understand about title tags
1. Title tags are the best way to proclaim what is your web page about.
2. That is not their only function.
Chose your title tags carefully
Because you have to tell the search engines what is your web document about in 65 to 70 characters including spaces.Not that 65 characters is the law, but search engines usualy set their cut of point at 65 characters. Which basically means that search engines will not show more than around 65 characters in the SERPs,but will “process” the whole title, have no doubt about that.
And if you already haven’t noticed it is not as easy as it looks like to some people. There are many factors involved in making a decent title for a web page. It must be enriched with your keywords, yet compelling and clickable, and to wrap things up your title tags have to be descriptive.
So to help your reading experience I made a few pointers on choosing the almighty title tags.
Include targeted keywords in your title tags.
This one is obvious.
Or is it ?
There are millions of pages without even a slightest hint of any keywords in their title tags.
But we won’t be bothered by them.
Lets assume that you did your keyword research and you found the perfect keywords for your product your service, or your cause.
You have done a great job researching keywords and now you are set to create your perfect title tags. Here is how you accomplish that.
First of all, do not stuff 10 keywords in your title tags separated only by commas with no structure whatsoever. It makes me sad when I see something like that. Title tags are not important to search engines only, they are important to searchers too, because they serve as links in the SERPs. Links have to be clicked so you better make them compelling and clickable.
The best practice is to include a very small number of keywords in your title tags, up to 3.
When you choose your keywords pick one that defines the content of the page best ,and put that keyword at the start of your title pages.
That means, if you are a plumber in New Haven Connecticut and an extremely affordable and professional one, you would use something like this:
“New Haven plumber with professional service and affordable rates”
This title is a decent one. Not the best, there was no keyword research and no market research and competitive analysis. But it would help our fictional plumber from New Haven to be seen as relevant by search engines for a decent array of search queries.
Think before you start writing your title tags. Include your keywords in a descriptive and compelling way.
Company name in title tags?
There are people in SEO industry who like to make a big fuss around this particular question.Yet, the answer is not that complicated. You should include your company name in your web page titles if you have enough “title real estate” and a reason to include it.What that reason might be? Branding maybe.
Of course, you would always include your company name if it is well known, otherwise you have to find better use for your 65 characters in the title tag.
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