SEO: How to Optimize Your Title Tags

If you’ve been dealing with SEO strategies for some time now, then you’re probably aware of just how fickle Google can be when it comes to algorithms that assess how search results will be displayed. If you’re brand new to SEO, on the other hand, you are still in the right place. Google has been in the process of changing the title tags of articles that are displayed on SERPs for a while now. The reason for these changes could be anything from the length of the title to the content of the page, and the queries most often searched for.

Ranking high on Search Engine Results Pages today is about more than just optimizing one or two elements of your page. According to many experts, the HTML title element of a page is perhaps the most important SEO factor to address for any organization. So what makes up a perfect title tag?

1. Relevance

First of all, a title that is highly relevant to the article or content of the page that it refers to, will maximize its level of usability, click-through satisfaction rate, and search engine ranking. It is typically a good idea to search for keyword phrases that are relevant to your title topic. The keywords that you use should have high amounts of value, and/or larger volumes of searches.

2. The Right Size

With a title tag, Google displays as many characters as can fit into a block element that does not exceed a single line of text. Because of this, there is no guaranteed perfect amount of titles that can ensure a title will display, in full, as it is supposed to. Once, Google used to display a maximum of 70 characters in a title, but that changed during the period of 2011 and 2012. If you want to make sure that your tag is showing up in Search Engine Results Pages properly, most experts suggest that you keep to a limit of under 59 characters. However, it’s worth noting that titles are displayed in the Arial font on Google, meaning that the characters you use will have an impact. For example, slender characters like I will take up less space than fatter characters, such as W.

3. Don’t Keyword Stuff

When you’re trying to optimize a title tag for Google, you need to try and rank for as many relevant terms as possible, without stuffing your title full of random words. Generally, a good rule of thumb is to optimize your article for one particular phrase and take a long-tail keyword approach. That will mean thinking about establishing more pages on your website – but that is part of the reality of marketing in 2015- content is going to be essential. Remember, coming up with too many page titles and not enough actual text on the pages of your website could lead to serious issues with the Google Panda algorithm. A highly unique and relevant title is not enough to keep a page with thin content afloat.

4. Be Unique

The ideal title tag for a page should be unique to the other pages on your website. In light of the Panda algorithm, you need to make sure that your page titles are unique. Make a habit of checking plagiarism online to reduce your chances of any accidental duplication – especially on large websites.

5. Do not Use Special Characters

It’s important to make sure that your title stands out, but this doesn’t mean using special characters to catch your readers’ attention. Google has gotten pretty good at removing these attempts, and even if you got away with it, you wouldn’t be giving your readers a very good impression of your company. Usually, utilizing strange characters on your title gives customers the impression that your website is unprofessional, or immature.