SEO title tag plays an important role to both online users and Bots (search engine crawlers). The title shown on SERPs helps users decide right away whether this is worth clicking. On the other hand, the title will also affect your content rankings on SERPs.
That’s why the SEO title tag deserves your serious investment of time and effort. In this article, On Digitals is honored to present to you the What, Where, Why, How of SEO title tag.
SEO title tag or meta title is the super HTML tag specified for the title of a website. It is also one of the Onpage SEO tactics that affects the title displayed on SERPs or media channels.
An SEO title has more than one display location, but the most common is on search engine results pages. Therefore, SEO title is the first thing exposed to users before they decide to visit your site.
SEO titles play a crucial role in the success of implementing SEO for websites. Specifically, the right SEO title tag:
The golden formula for writing SEO titles includes the following elements:
Let’s deep dive in each element for better understanding.
The optimal length for the title to be fully displaced on SERPs is 65-70 characters (including spaces), or about 512 pixels. Exceeding these numbers and your title will have “...” at the end to indicate that not all words are shown.
In this case, it will be difficult for users to understand the overview of your content, hence reducing the likelihood of clicking through.
However, the optimal number of characters for the title varies with industry. So to know the exact number applied for your niche, follow these steps:
The Yoast SEO plugin will help you create content, make postings on your site and simplify the task of counting characters in titles. You can also use Microsoft Word to automatically count the number of characters by highlighting the meta title, going to the Review tab and clicking Word Count. A box will show up with many numbers, but you just need to pay attention to the line saying “Characters (with spaces)”.
Each article must have a unique title, which means no duplication for any title in your whole website. This is for Google to consider the page as new and useful to users, which leads to improvements in the indexing speed of the page or the article.
On the other hand, avoid generic titles like “An article about...” or “A catalog of...” because Google will regard them as duplicate content both on and off the site. Ambiguous and uninteresting titles will also have a hard time attracting audience.
Internet users have a habit of reading from left to right, from top to bottom. As a result, Google's algorithms often put more value on the first words in the title and article. It leads to the best practice of placing the main keyword right at the beginning of the title, even headings and paragraphs.
Also, this placement will ensure the main keyword in the title to be shown fully on SERPs, hence increasing the likelihood of click-throughs. But be noted that this placement is not a sure-win solution. If it makes the title sound unnatural, opt for another place to put your main keyword.
An effective title must be able to describe the main content of the article. If your title doesn’t capture the focus of the article, or even worse, totally off-target, user experience will suffer drastically. Moreover, search engines will rate the title as unrelated to the content, consequently making it less competitive on SERPs.
As stated above, although one of the best positions for the main keyword is at the beginning of the title, don’t blindly apply it, especially if it makes the title sound weird, unnatural or machine-generated. Natural human language is highly rated by Google for bringing positive value to users.
Before creating the content and deciding on the title, target audience research must be conducted to find out their locations, age groups and topics they are interested in. With this information, craft the best possible SEO title tag - one that solves the problem they are looking for. Also, the content must revolve around the title to increase customer experience on your site.
Lying under each query is a need to find a solution to a problem. Thus, when doing SEO, put your effort in crafting an HTML or meta title tag that shows how the user can benefit from clicking on it instead of promoting your products. By this way, your content will gain more traction from users.
In addition to following the above formula, which means avoiding mistakes such as title being too long or duplicated, let’s make sure these are also in your Not-to-do list:
If you are under pressure of deadlines and in dire need of a catchy SEO title, try one of these 6 templates:
The title focuses on negative consequences and damages to health, appearance, finance stability and the like if users overlook this article. This type of title often makes users so curious that they have to click and read. However, never try to use an offensive, scandalous or horrifying title to “bait” users.
Examples:
This is a popular title type for keywords related to topics of cooking, gardening, crafting, etc. Unsurprisingly, the number of this title type has increased during the pandemic because people have more time for these activities.
Examples:
This type is sought-after when users want to get a lot of information. Content that often uses toplist titles are shopping products, traveling locations, reputable brands in a certain sector, etc.
Examples:
Many SEO practitioners prefer this title type because of its ease of use and effectiveness. It is especially effective for long-tail keywords. To get the most out of this, research on user search habits and long-tail keywords first, then build a title that users have searched for before.
Examples:
Titles containing words such as “the secret” or “the truth” often stimulate users to click through. This template is effective for articles related to entrepreneurs, celebrities, learning, etc.
Adages, proverbs and idioms have an easier time to sync with users. When the title resonates with them, the click-through rate will also increase.
Example:
SEO title tag is an important factor of Onpage SEO in particular and SEO in general. SEO meta title tag has a direct impact on the likelihood of users to click on the page displayed on Google SERPs. That’s why SEO title tag plays an important role in the traffic, indexing speed and keyword ranking of the article.
We hope this article has helped you understand clearly about SEO title tags, including best practices to create them.
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