Title Tag Development Techniques
This might sound straight and forward but you would not believe how many title tags I see every day that look extremely horrendous in the online space. There are some rules and tips that everyone looking to optimize any website should follow when writing out there web pages title tags.
What Should The Length Be?: The search engine results page only displays about 60-65 characters for the title tag so you should always try to keep it at that length. Don’t let them run off the side of the monitor because that is not a good optimization strategy.
How Does A Title Tag Look?: On the backside of the code it looks like this? Which you can see if you right click on your web page and go to “view source” you can see all you’re coding on the back side of that particular page.
Don’t Use Symbols: There are many common symbols that will affect the way the search engines read your title tags. Things like “&” and “%” symbols could foul up how the search engines read the information on your website. The last thing you want to do is spend a great deal of time optimizing your website only to include one of these symbols and screw up how the search engines read your title tags. Just keep it clean, use only text and vertical or horizontal dashes if you have to use any symbols.
Keep Them Relevant: Your title tag should always be unique to what is occurring on your page. You never want to have the same title tag running across every page of your website that is just poor website optimization. Writing well written and optimized title tags is something that truly takes time and practice. Over time after generating experience you will really figure out exactly how to craft the most optimized title tags possible. Keeping things unique and tasteful throughout your website is always the ultimate goal when you decide to optimize your website.
11 Responses to “Title Tag Development Techniques”
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Good list. Here are two more ideas:
1) Try to mesh page content relevancy with a keyword (or two) that has a high monthly search volume.
http://www.google.com.sktool is useful, as it the AdWords keyword generator.
2) Watch for subtle differences in wording that can make a big difference in page conversions. For example, the plural form of a search phrase might indicate that someone is searching for a range of vendors (i.e. “physical therapists in New York”) while the singular form (i.e., “physical therapist New York”) likely indicates that the person is seeking a particular physical therapist but can’t remember the name!
Hi David,
Thanks for reading and sharing your additional key points! These are excellent additions to this post and are a great best practice as well!
Thanks again & take care,
Nick
Hey Nick,
What about the pipes “|” this type of symbol people used in their page title, is it good sign in the eyes of search engine? Also is it true that your page main keyword should come first in title.
I have used Google trends extensively and plotted the report for singular and plural and list of niche keywords to get page conversions.It gives month wise report as well as geographic location and language wise reports. I have been successful in using this in many of the websites and blog postings.
Hi Ray,
Thanks for reading and your question.
Using a pipe symbol in the title tag as you call it does work well as it helps certain things stand out. And yes, I typically recommend targeting the more important keywords within the title tag for the keywords being targeted for a particular page.
Thanks again & take care,
Nick
I think uniqueness and relevance are the most important aspects. Keeping to the set limit is also important and my personal choice of seperator is the basic comma (,).
Hi Rob,
Thanks for reading and sharing your thoughts…great point!
Take Care,
Nick
Great Post the first step in seo start with title tag. Title tag optimization is important and each page in website should have a different and unique title tag. One should keep the quality and relevancy of title tag and according craft their title tag.
I always put a my clients 2 biggest keywords first (Home page) and then their company name all separated by “|” pipes. Neat and clean. Long tail | Short(er) tail | Company Name. Has always worked out good for me.
Hi Nick. Good reminder of some title tag basics. It was very helpful. I recently switched over to a new website format and at the moment I can’t do on page optimisation myself. The web developers do it and they have put my website name in the title tag before my home page keywords. It all fits in when I do a search on the google, but is this wise? I have been trying to get them to take the website name out of the title. What do you recommend?
I agree with all of your points, especially not using symbols, keeping them relevant and making sure the title doesn’t have too many characters.
Hi Chris,
Thanks for reading and sharing your situation here!
I recommend including the company name on certain key pages that you visitors might be search and you need to pull in that branded search side of things. Otherwise, if it is a new website, perhaps towards the end of the title tag or just on the homepage, depending on the type of site…
Hope this helps!
Thanks again for reading.
Take Care,
Nick