How to Make the Most Out of Your SEO Title Tag
Getting a title tag right is fundamental to any successful seo campaign. It is such a simple thing to get right yet it still comes as the most common mistake affecting a plethora of websites online. Customizing your title tags allows you the opportunity to feature in the search engine results for a whole host of your keywords whilst at the same time promoting your brand.
Lets expose the most common mistake and then put it right…
One of our recent clients, a dentist, made the (sacrilegious) mistake of having one title tag for their homepage and have this replicated over their entire site. Their SEO title tag formula was simply – Welcome to the BRAND NAME.
This meant a few things:
- The chances of their pages to get ranked in the search engines, apart from the homepage, are very small indeed. Duplicate title tags should be avoided at all costs. They would need a hell of a lot of links pointing to their site to see any sort of ranking.
- The only information they are giving the search engine is their brand name. You don’t have an idea as to what kind of services and products they offer.
- With content on a whole host of topics such as teeth whitening, wisdom teeth extraction etc etc, yet not having unique title tags, they were missing out on the opportunity to rank every single one of their internal pages, matching them to those phrases.
In a world of trying to feature prominently in Google and other search engines, a world of connecting yourselves with your customers, competition is very tough. This post on the importance of the title tag is going up against some tough competition as you can see below.
As you can see this post to do with the “title tag” faces some tough competition. To feature prominently in the Google SERPs you have to have the keyword phrase in your title tag to stand a chance. With anything in life, there are no hard and fast rules for how something should be done. The same goes for the optimization of title tags as a number of schools of thought exist as to how best practice them for SEO. Having said that, there are definitely some ground rules that all us SEOers can agree on.
A Few SEO Title Tag Ground Rules
- Limit your character length to 65 characters. Succinct writing is, in our opinion, the best form of writing. If you can convey and display your message to your customers in a shorter space the better. Google will only show the first 65 characters and will cut off your title after that point.
- Use branding in your title tags. If you have a successful brand already, the title tag can be a great place to benefit from the reputation you’ve already established. If people trust and value your brand they’re more likely to read your content. Similarly if you’re trying to establish a brand it can also be a great place to start.
- Put your keywords in your title tags. When doing an SEO Melbourne campaign, you ideally want to have one page optimized for one primary keyword and make sure you feature it in the title tag. Avoid the mistake outlined earlier and instead spread your brand and your products and services wider and deeper.
- Remember who you’re writing for. Whilst search engines index your web pages, it is regular humans like you or I who end up reading them. Don’t write mechanically. Sure feature the keyword but you also need to make sure the text in your title tag is readable and attractive.
With these ground rules in mind it’s time to reveal the way we do our title tags.
Introducing Our Simple SEO Title Tag Formula That Works…
There’s no one and only formula for doing title tags but nevertheless here is the generic way that we produce title tags that work, that get clicked. Your title tag should look something like this formula:
Keyword | Brand Name
This builds your brand and gives the opportunity for all your unique content on your site to feature prominently in the search engines like a dream. You might be questioning this as a formula based on it going against the ground rules laid out previously. You might be thinking that this is not writing for a human and is not attractive enough for people to click on. This is a fair point and the truth is you have options. Lets go back to the dentist example.
Following the formula above our page on “teeth whitening” could follow the formula and have the following title tag:
Teeth Whitening | Brand Name
Or if you want to go for a more natural and free thinking title you could use your imagination as long as you convey the core benefits of your page. Your title tag could read as follows:
Explore Teeth Whitening Options | Brand name
The choice is yours. This provides a great basis to have a consistent structure to all of your title tags so that your brand is easily recognisable. With that in mind, the site structure of your title tags could look as follows.
Keyword 1 | Brand Name
Keyword 2 | Brand Name
Keyword 3 | Brand Name
Ans so on | Brand Name
This should give you a few ideas to mull over when it comes to getting your title tags right. It is such an easy yet fundamental part of the on page optimization process that you simply have to get right if you want to connect with your customers.
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