Title Tag SEO Masterclass

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What is a title tag and how can it help you in SEO – Title Tag Master Class


One of the most important factors in SEO changes you can actually make to your site is the title tag. This page should give you all you need to know to become a TITLE TAG master!

What is a Title Tag and where can you find it?

1. In the browser:

At the top of each browser the tabs display Title tags to help users navigate and switch between pages easier.

Title tag in a browser tab

2. In the page source:

The Title tag should appear in the < head > section of your page code.

[html]HTML title tag
Other website content would be here…
[/html]

3. In the search engine results page:

The title tag is used by all the major search engines to create the descriptive “snippet” for your site when it appears in the search engine results for a search. This is a big part of your opportunity to convince searchers to click through to your site. It also can have an impact on how satisfied they are with their click, because they will leave quickly if the page doesn’t match the Title tag’s description.

title-tag-serp

Notice something? The title tag on the page is “HTML title tag” however in the Google search engine results page, the title appears as “HTML title tag – W3Schools” Now why is that?

When title tags aren’t always displayed the same in the search engine results page.

Basically, the title tags aren’t always what appears on the search engine results page, Google in particular may add, remove or completely change what is displayed. This depends on whether they think it will help the user. In this example W3Schools is the brand and as it’s well known and trusted it’s appended it on the end. The reason could be because of that or because the title tag is relatively short so they have extended it by adding the brand name which is useful.

In some other cases the anchor (the text used to link to you) may be used instead. Or more commonly the text used to link to you on DMOZ (a website directory) but there is a way to stop that from happening:

[html]<pre><meta name=”robots” content=”NOODP” /></pre>[/html]

Just add that into your <head>.

Title tag length

Your title tag may also be shortened down in search engine results page’s if it’s too long 65-70 characters is around the maximum size of the title tag before it gets cut off. However that isn’t a full proof rule  as the actual length before it is shortened is based on the pixel width of the title tag in whole. But this doesn’t mean you can’t have long title tags, if it makes sense to do so have longer title tags as Google may pick the most relevant part of it and that part may be shown to the visitor.

Best practise for higher rankings!

Here are just few examples of  how you can structure your title tag using a cheese company as a demonstration.

TITLE: CheesesRus – Buy super fine cheese online
In this example we have “Brand name – what you can do on the site” this is OK for the homepage if the homepage isn’t really targeting any keywords  and is focused on getting branded traffic for people typing in “CheesesRus”. However if you’re not a big brand then this title tag isn’t optimal if it’s logical to do so you should put your keywords in your title tag so here would be a better example in that scenario: 

TITLE: Buy Cheese Online – CheesesRus So why is the brand last in this example?

How order makes a difference in title tags

So the “power” attributed to the title tag goes in order of left to right so the first word/term has the most power. So if you reversed the above example there it’s possible that your ranking for “buy cheese online” would lower as your saying “CheesesRus” is more important because it comes last. Here’s a illustrated example of this.

title-tag-power

If you want a rule I’ll give you one, the more competitive or important the keyword term is to you is that is the order you should put it in.

What about multiple keyword terms that are similar?

So this is a common issue what if your targeted keywords are multiple and different? Like “Buy cheeses online, Buy cheddar online, Buy bire online, Buy fine cheeses online” etc. Here are some options for you:

Option 1 (worse option):
TITLE: Buy cheeses online, Buy cheddar online, Buy bire online, Buy fine cheeses online
Keep it like it is, this can appear a bit spammy but does work.

Option 2 (better option):
TITLE: Buy cheeses online – cheddar, bire and more fine cheeses to buy online.
Or
TITLE: Cheddar, bire, fine cheeses – Buy Online
Will look nicer in the search engine results page as well as it’s less spammy so you may rank better in this way anyway. One thing to know is that it’s all very very dependant on alot of things.

Option 3 (best option):
Creating separate pages with separate title tags for each one targeting that specific cheese, is the best option.

How to separate keywords in title tags

There are a few options to separate keywords in title tags you can do something like this TITLE: Cheese | Bire | Fine or TITLE: Cheese, Bire, Fine or TITLE: Cheese – Bire – Fine so what is the best option? There really isn’t one only consider that using the pipe | and dash – take 3 characters and the comma , is only 2. Also most people are used to seeing , in everyday reading so it may be the best method. Does , | – contribute to anything? No they are ignored.

How title tags on other pages and affect other pages 

Right lets draw out a little sitemap here:

PAGE-TITLE

Homepage – Buy Cheeses Online, Cheddar, Bire – Cheeses R Us
Bire Page – Buy Cheeses Online, Cheddar, Bire – Cheeses R Us
Cheddar Page – Buy Cheeses Online, Cheddar, Bire – Cheeses R Us

You see the problem? All pages have the same title tag. Causing DUPLICATES!

Homer Duplicates Oh NoOh NOOOOOO!

Duplicates are bad but I’ll mention them in another page. Anyway what you want to do in this case is change the title tags so its something like:

Homepage – Buy Cheeses Online- Cheeses R Us
Bire Page – Buy Bire Online – Cheeses R Us
Cheddar Page – Buy Cheddar Online – Cheeses R Us
(Remember adding the brand on the end is optional of all pages apart from homepage but even then thats optional)

Want to see the most common problem I see when doing on page audits? Here it is:

canibalise-title-tags

That’s right! It’s when I find zombies barbecuing keywords. Just kidding, no it’s title tag keyword cannibalization. Let me give you an example of this:

Homepage – Buy Cheeses Online – Cheeses R Us
Bire Page – Buy Bire Online – Cheeses R Us
Cheddar Page – Buy Cheddar Online – Cheeses R Us
Contact Us Page – Contact Us – Buy Cheeses Online – Cheeses R Us
About Us – Buy Cheddar online about Cheeses R Us

See? Although there are no duplicates there are similar keywords on different pages that are not about those subjects. The contact page isn’t about buying cheeses online so it shouldn’t be in the title tag. It should just say something like “Contact Cheeses R Us” or just simply “Contact Us” don’t try to add extra keywords where they are not needed. If you did even search for “Buy cheeses online” and you went to that page it wouldn’t really do such as a good job converting me into a customer as would the homepage.

How different page elements interact with the title tag

The h1, title tag, url and page content should all work together so here are a few ideal situations:

Example 1:

url: example.com/buy-bire-online/
title: Buy Bire Online – Cheeses R Us
h1: Buy Bire Online

Example 2:

url: example.com/buy-online/bire/
title: Buy Bire Online Free Delivery
h1: Buy Bire Online

See what’s going on everything is in harmony and working together!

That’s it you are now a title tag master!

title-tag-master

Feel like you’re not? Get in touch and we’ll be happy to help you out!