One of the most overlooked yet highly beneficial parts of optimizing a page for the SERPs is your title tags. If you haven’t been paying attention to yours, you are missing out. Here at Tandem Buzz, we make it part of our onboarding process to check and audit our potential client’s title tags, meta descriptions, and URL architecture. It shouldn’t be a surprise that title tags are often the first thing we optimize once a client has signed on.
You may be wondering, “Why worry about the title tags?” Or you could even be asking, “What is a title tag?” Here at Tandem, our busy bees have the experience and knowledge to answer that question and to tell you some title tag best practices.
What Is a Title Tag?
Before we can jump in on the best practices for writing title tags, it is important to know what they are and what they do. The title tag is an HTML code that lets you add a title to the page, and this title is what can be seen in the search engine results pages, or SERPs. This means that this will be the first thing possible for readers or customers to see and judge your site. If the title tag mentions an answer to a question they have or if it matches what they are looking for, then they are much more likely to click your page. Alternatively, this also means it is crucial to make sure your content elaborates and provides detail to what is seen in your title tag, because, if they don’t match, then readers won’t stay on your page long.
Your title tags are important factors in telling search engines about your page. They are the first impressions. Great, optimized title tags mean a great first impression, and the SERPs love that!
SEO Title Tags
Once you understand what a title tag is and what they do, now the process of creating them can start. Our digital marketing team has given some title tag best practices to share with you.
Plan Out Your Title Tags
It is best to start with a plan for your title tags, and not that this step shouldn’t take too long. We don’t want to spend too much time on planning because once the page is written and published, the title tag can always be changed if it doesn’t meet your needs.
Write to Your Audience
Your page and content are created with your audience in mind, and your title tags shouldn’t be any different. Write your title tags with quality keywords meant for a user-friendly experience.
Give Visitors a Reason to Click Your Page
Title tags are about bringing people to your page through SERPs. Your title tag should communicate the benefits of clicking on your page, and some ways to get this across to visitors are:
- In-depth Information: Let them know that all the information and details they need about their inquiry are going to be found on your page.
- How-to guides: Show them that your site is the place where they can learn exactly how to do what they are trying to learn.
- Deals: Make it known that your page or site is the place to be for great deals on products and services.
- Online tools: Your page is right where they need to be to find online tools and/or calculations that they need.
Filling the need of what your user may be looking for is a great way to get them on your site.
Title Tag Length
A general SEO title tag best practice is to keep your title tag short and to the point. Most search engines only display 50 to 60 characters in the search results. A great length to strive for is 65 characters, as anything longer than that and you might lose the reader’s attention.
It is important to know that when writing title tags that different characters take up different amounts of space. There are wider letters and skinnier letters, so make sure you test the title tag to make sure it looks appealing and clean in the SERPs. Also, there are great tools to use that can help you keep your title tags at the perfect length.
Good Title Tag Examples:
- 63 Characters: Writing Title Tags | SEO Best Practices | Tandem Buzz Marketing
- 53 Characters: What Is a Title Tag? | SEO Writing Tips | Tandem Buzz
Both of these examples use keywords and tell the reader exactly what they will be reading about on this page, even though these are different lengths. Since they are still in the character count range, they will display nicely in the SERPs.
Important Keywords Should Go First
One of the first and most important steps an SEO specialist takes when writing content is to do keyword research. This will allow them to see what is ranking in search engines and which words will be best to boost their content. Another title tag best practice is to put your targeted keywords first. This will reduce the chance of them being cut off and will keep them where potential readers can see them. In the examples above, both times the word title tags were mentioned at the beginning, showing readers they will be learning about title tags from this blog.
Different Title Tags Should Be Used for Different Pages
Each one of your pages is unique and should be treated as such. This means a different title tag is created for each page to reflect that page’s unique content. No two pages will have the exact same content, so they shouldn’t have the exact same title tags. The SERPs aren’t big fans of duplicate tags, and will often flag pages for using boilerplate, near-identical titles.
Use Your Brand
The use of title tags is a great way to bring more traffic to your site. You’ll want to mention your branding so that users can see the company they are trusting to gain information from. It is important, though, not to overuse your branding. Mentioning your brand name once or using it at the end is a great way to approach using it.
Don’t Overuse Keywords
Keyword stuff is NOT one of the title tag best practices. It is ill-advised in all aspects of SEO as it is seen as a gimmick and not a genuine SEO tool. If you have too many keywords, then your title tag will not appease the SERPs.
For example, “What Is a Title Tag? | Writing Title Tags | Tandem Title Tags” is exactly what we don’t want the title tag for this blog to look like. It will have a negative effect on the rankings and seem spammy to readers. Like branding, it is best to use the keyword only once in a title tag.
Give Us a Buzz
Tandem Buzz is here not only to share our knowledge of SEO and other marketing aspects, but we put them to good use as well. If you or your company are looking for a South Florida Marketing Agency, give us a buzz! We are happy to help.
