How to Write Perfect Title Tags For SEO | Tips on Writing Title Tags.
How to Write Compelling Title Tags
One of the first things most website owners learn about SEO is how little power you truly have. A lot of what determines where your website’s pages will show up in the rankings is outside of your control. But those limitations make it all the more important to do what you can with the parts you can control.
Every business can at least practice good on-site optimization. It’s a relatively cheap and easy way to give your website an edge over the (surprisingly) numerous sites that don’t bother to do it.
Along with meta descriptions and on-page optimization, one of the most important on-page ranking factors you have control over is the title tag. Learn more about it in this post!
Title tags in SEO are like the title of your book for the demographics of your two most important types of readers; people and robots.
People need to know what they can expect to find on your page when they click the link. The robots (crawlers) prioritize your page and its content through a ton of factors, with one very important SEO ranking signal being the title tag.
Let’s take a look at title tags and the best practices to ensure they’re optimized for crawlers and readers alike.
What are Title Tags?
<Title> tags are an HTML element found in the <head> section of the HTML code of your web page.
sample
Title tags SEO ke liye behad jaruri hote hai but kya title tags ranking factor hote hai, kya title tags sirf 50, 60, ya 70 characters ke hone chahiye, kya title tags ko pixels me measure Karna chahiye in sabhi sawalo ka jawab hai aaj ke video me.
How to Write Perfect Title Tags For SEO | Tips on Writing Title Tags.
Off-Page SEO Checklist | All Steps of Off-Page SEO Explained | Off-Page SEO in Hindi :
In the HTML code of your web page, they should appear as:
<head>
<title> Your Title Goes Here </title>
</head>
These titles can appear in:
- Search engine results
- Social media posts
- Unfurled chat messages
- Browser tabs
Why are Title Tags Important?
Title tags are important because they let readers know what information will be present when a user clicks on a page.
They are important for the search engines for the same reason, except they also function to determine the relevancy of the web page as a result of a search query.
If Google doesn’t like your title tag, then they may change it to better suit their / user needs. If this happens, you can bet it most likely won’t be to your liking.
Can you see why title tags are so important? A good title tag means maximum visibility, while a bad title tag can sink your page.
There are three important steps to take to optimize your title tags.
- make sure your headlines make for good title tags
- create the title tag
- make sure the title tag is optimized for SEO
Let’s dive into all three.
Step 1: Write Your Title Tag
You might be wondering how writing a title tag is any different from writing a headline.
In some cases, your headline and title tag will be the same exact title. But there are some cases where they won’t be.
It seems like the title for the page would be “How Content Marketing Builds Your Business,” right?
But when you go to the page, you’ll see a different title:
The title shown on the page is longer and more descriptive.
So why would Copyblogger do this? It’s most likely because the shorter title tag looks better on the SERP, and it takes less time to read.
The actual title that you see on the page goes into more detail, and that’s probably why they used it. They get the benefits of having both a streamlined title tag and a descriptive page title.
It’s a sneaky and useful tactic that’s the sort of SEO stuff I love.
With that in mind, here’s how to write a great title tag.
There are a few elements of title tags:
Title Tags Should Be Short
Shorter titles are easier for people to read and for search engines to crawl.
But there’s a better reason for shorter title tags.
If your title tag is too long, search engines will cut off your title with an ellipsis (…):
Ideally, your readers and search engines should be able to see the entire title tag so they get the best idea of what the content is about.
Google typically shows no more than 60 characters of the title tag. So if your title tag is 60 characters or less, you can generally expect that the entire title will show.
This is a great feature that I recommend you use. Remember, keep it short if possible.
Title Tags Should Contain Your Main Keyword
You probably expected to see something about keywords in an article about SEO.
For best results, try to put your focus keyword as close to the beginning of your title as possible. That’s so search engines (and people) will see the keyword early on.
Here’s a title tag with the keyword right up front:
Keywords
Perhaps even more important than a length in your web page title tags are the keywords you use.
Title tags can do wonders for your SEO when optimized with the right keywords. Put in the most relevant and desired keywords you want to rank for in the title, but don’t overdo it.
Google can easily recognize keyword stuffing and may change the title of your web page if it feels you’re just throwing different variations of a keyword into it.
Example: Groom Your Dog: A Guide to Dog Grooming for Groomed Pups | Animal Grooming
The “grooming” keyword appears four times, which is way too much. A simple, “How to Groom Your Dog,” would certainly suffice here.
However, the one thing this example does well is to place the keyword at the beginning of the query.
There has been a lot of debate about where your keywords should be placed in a title tag for SEO; in the beginning or does it really matter?
If we look at the image below, the main keyword appears within the first five words of each article ranking at the top after the first organic result and SERP Feature results.
Obviously, there are cases when the word can appear towards the end of a result; however, it’s a safe practice to place the keyword toward the beginning as much as possible.
Title Tags Should Describe a Benefit
Much like a headline, a title tag needs to communicate a benefit to stand out.
This is one of many reasons Google warns against keyword stuffing and boilerplate titles.
Your title tags are representatives of your pages, and you want people and search engines to know that your pages have unique, valuable content.
Make sure your title tag is related to your content. It should read naturally and grab the reader’s attention.
Keep in mind, you’re not trying to trick people. All you need to do is clearly explain the benefit of clicking on the page.
Often, the “benefit” is nothing more than telling them what the page is about! At this point, you’re not trying to sell anything. You’re simply giving them information.
Here’s an example that clearly expresses a benefit (ignore the jargon-filled, not-so-great meta description).
Avoiding Stop Words in Your Title Tags
A stop word can be any of the following:
- A
- And
- But
- So
- On
- Or
- The
- Was
- With
Sometimes it might not seem possible to have a title tag without stop words, but if you try different combinations of the same title, you can find them.
Use Unique Titles
Most web pages on your site are different so you should distinguish their differentiations from their titles. As Google states, don’t use generic titles like “Home” or “Profile” to name your pages.
If you do, Google may change the name to something more in line with what the web page contains.
For example, the website below has its title listed as such in the SERPs:
What’s the difference between title tags and H1-tags?
In short, everything—they’re entirely different HTML tags.
The confusion arises because the title and H1-tag copy are often the same.
For example, here’s the H1-tag from our list of 75 SEO tips.
From a copy standpoint, it’s the same as the title tag.
This way of doing things is standard practice for most websites as it helps with clarity and consistency. If users click through from the SERPs because of a particular title, chances are they’re expecting the same (or at least a similar) title on the page.
So how do you know the difference?
In short, it’s your title tag that’s visible in the SERPs and when your content is shared on any other platform. On the other hand, the H1-tag is the displayed “title” on the actual page.
Don’t confuse this with the title that’s visible in the tab of your browser—this is the title tag.
So, now you understand what a title tag is and how it’s important, let’s talk about how you can craft a good one.
But first, let’s go over a few basics…
A quick guide to title tag rules (and etiquette)
Have you ever seen a result in the SERPs that looks like this?
This is known as title tag truncation.
Google starts cutting off title tags in the SERPs after around 50–60 characters. (Well, it’s actually based on pixels, but 50–60 characters is a good rule of thumb.) So keep your title tags around this length.
You can test your title tag with one of these pixel-width-checking tools:
SIDENOTE. You can also do a full check of all title tags on your site using our SEO analyzer tool.
How about this?
Probably not.
All-caps is poor etiquette when it comes to title tags. And honestly, I’ve never seen an all-caps title tag ranked on the first page (or anywhere, for that matter).
Here are the two options we recommend for title tag formatting:
- Sentence case: Capitalize the first letter of the first word (e.g., “Dwell time: is it really a ranking factor? (and if so, should you care?)”)
- Title case: Capitalize the first letter of most words. Use this tool to convert anything to title case (e.g., “10 Google Sheets Formulas Every SEO Should Know”)
And yes, the odd all-caps word (for emphasis) is fine.
Just don’t go for all-caps. It will attract attention. And not for the right reasons.
Here are a few other things to keep in mind when crafting title tags:
- Write for humans, not search engines: Don’t shoehorn a bunch of unnatural-looking keywords in your title tags. It’s not 1998!;
- Make sure all title tags are unique (no matter what): Duplicate title tags are a common problem. Try to avoid them;
- Make sure a title tag exists on all pages: Don’t fall at the first hurdle; make sure all pages on your website have a title tag. (This is a surprisingly common issue.)
Got it? Good. Let’s get crafting!
Step 1. Find a PRIMARY keyword to target
Here at Ahrefs, we generally advocate targeting topics over keywords.
This is because most pages don’t just rank for their “head” keyword, they also rank for lots of other related terms and variations (i.e., long-tail keywords).
In fact, we found that the average #1 ranking page will also rank well for about 1,000 other relevant keywords.
Step 2. Find LONG-TAIL variations of your primary keyword
You should always be targeting ONE primary keyword.
But it also usually makes sense to target one or two long-tail keywords.
Why? Because it can take a long time to rank for your main keyword. But you can start getting traffic from long-tail variations quite quickly.
And these long-tail variations can often be incorporated into your title tag without unnatural shoehorning.
But what are long-tail keywords? I’ll let explain: Long-tail keywords are search queries with very low individual search volume, but an enormous total search demand as a group. The name comes from the “long tail” of the so-called “search demand curve” — a graph, that plots all keywords by their search volumes.
