Everyone that has spent anytime studying SEO or reading my blog knows that the title tag is one of the most important factors in ranking well on the SERP’s. Title tag planning is crucial for SEO. What pages within your site will target which words? What pages will match each other and share terms? Which page will focus on only one phrase and which will focus on 3 to 5? These are just a portion of questions to ask yourself when it comes to title tags and SEO. There are definitely more things to think about such as location of company/website name, prominence, density, total characters, and the amount of times to mention the key phrase that that page is targeting.
Here are several examples of title tags ranking #1 & #2 for really tough terms.
#1 & 2 for “Mesothelioma Attorney“
#1 & 2 for “Search Engine Marketing“
#1 & 2 for “San Diego Hotels“
#1 & 2 for “Mortgage Loan Broker“
JameSEO Conclusion:
- Too many other ranking factors to predict how a title tag should be used.
- Google doesn’t display words after ~65-70 characters. (This doesn’t mean whole tag isn’t examined.)
- The only thing all top ranking sites’ title tags have in common is the presence of the keyword phrase and that the keyword phrases are in bold.
- Plurals and singulars have some type of relationship.
- Density of keyword counts.
The only right way to write a title tag is to describe the page correctly and honestly. Here are some SEO questions to ask yourself when creating proper title tags.
- Does it match keywords in META?
- Does it correlate with the description?
- Does it match the keywords in headings (H1, H2,..)?
- Does it go with page file name and URL (Page Title ~ page-title.php)?
- Does it describe the body content?
- Is the company/website name located in the title tag? If so, where?
- How prominent is the key phrase in the title tag (1st phrase in title or cut off at the end)?
- What’s the density of the targeted keyword? (total keywords divided by total words)
- How many characters are in the title tag?
- How many words are in title tag?
- Is the title eye-catchy? Does it stick out amongst the competition?
- Exact, phrase and broad match of keyword in title.
- Is the title tag unique from the other titles of your site? Are there duplicates?
All these questions should be asked comparatively speaking of your competition.
Hope this helps anyone learning how to write title tags.
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