Hello Friends I have recently started a new blog and wrote this article on Importance of Title Tags in SEO. There is some pretty useful info in the post(I feel that way). I would have posted here but I am not doing that as I feel there will be problems with duplicate content. I hope you don't take this as spamming. I really feel this post will help you. Thanks and please post any new suggestions if you have. Regards BUBAIPAL
Good stuff. I would like to reiterate by saying I can confirm that optimising title tags alone have been the most powerful form of onsite optimisation, below getting an exact matching keyword domain with a TLD specific to the geographic region you are targeting.
Nice post... There is some useful info there for novice SEO peeps... I have a few comments or slightly different views on several of the points you made... Don't take it personally please... Just my opinions and experiences. About your nomenclature... You keep calling it a title tag... When you talk about the <title>some keyword phrase(s)</title> collectively you should call it the title element or <title> element... It is an HTML element. When you talk specifically about it from a coding perspective - the start or opening HTML code for the title element (<title>) and the end or closing HTML code for the title element (</title>) - then it is an start/opening or end/closing 'tag'. Common mistake... People also mistakenly refer to HTML attributes like rel="nofollow" as tags when in reality, they are HTML attributes. See 7.4.2 at http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/struct/global.html. IMO there should be nothing in the <title> element BUT your targeted keyword phrases. Putting extra crap there like your web site name does nothing to really help you rank for any keyword phrase and actually makes it harder to rank for your targeted keywords. It dilutes your keyword density within the title element. I agree with you that the most important keyword phrase should appear 1st, the 2nd most important phrase (if applicable) should appear 2nd, and the 3rd most important keyword phrase (if applicable) should appear 3rd. If you have "Change Oil - Changing Your Oil - How to Change Your Oil - Mysite.com" as the value of a <title> element, what is the likelihood that someone is going to search at Google for "changing your oil mysite.com"? Rare IMO... The page is NOT about "Mysite.com". The <title> element should contain keywords that describe what the page is about. And if they do search for "changing your oil mysite.com" then the simple fact that your domain name already matches the "mysite.com" in the search phrase will usually be enough to make you rank equally as high as if it were in the <title>. So I never use anything but the targeted keywords in my <title> elements. I have absolutely no problem with <title> elements like "Change Oil - Changing Your Oil - How to Change Your Oil". I don't think it looks that spammy at all and goes a long way toward making you rank for slight variations of the topic of the page. "Change Your Oil - Change Your Oil - Change Your Oil", however, does look spammy. Also, I would never use "Changing Your Oil - Changing Your Transmission Fluid - Changing Your Radiator Fluid". These are 3 different topics and should be 3 pages. But people make this mistake often as well. I totally agree with keeping the <title> element to at most 65 characters... But I disagree with your statement "it will not be used in your SERPs". Google will most definitely still show your <title> element in the SERPs, but they will truncate it at position 65 or 66 and follow it with an elipses (...). The entire <title> element will still be considered from a ranking algorithm perspective, but it simply gets truncated when it appears in the SERPs. It is VERY rare for Google to construct a <title> element... only if a web page doesn't have one. They do, however, frequently construct a <meta name="description> element when it doesn't contain all of the keywords from the search phrase, but they never construct a <title> element because it exceeds the 65 character display limit. See http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&num=100&q=mortrage+refinance+inurl:mortgageloan.com as an example... Notice the indented URL at #2 for their home page (http://www.mortgageloan.com/). What shows in the SERPs is "Compare Mortgage Rates | Refinance, Mortgage Loans, Home Equity, ..." which has the elipses (...) at the end to indicate that the <title> element has been truncated. Click on the link and view the source. Now look at the <title> element. It appears as follows: <title>Compare Mortgage Rates | Refinance, Mortgage Loans, Home Equity, Mortgage Rate Calculator</title> It contains 89 characters but gets truncated at position 64. They didn't construct an irrelevant <title> for the SERPs. They simply truncated the one that is there. IMO only do this if you think people are searching on the 'boasted' terms. Yahoo! in your example might have been targeting "Best Web-Based Email" as one of their main keyword phrases for that page. I think you have to do this on EVERY page on your site, not just on pages that sell products. It IS the process of coming up with keywords or keyword phrases that the page is targeting so that you can place the most important 1, 2, or 3 keyword phrases in the <title> element. Every page on your site should have a specific topic... ESPECIALLY the deeper pages. And the topic of the page should ALWAYS appear in the <title> element. Anyone who creates a site and doesn't include a <title> element for each and every page... well... they /fail. The home page and 1st level pages below that should target head terms or broader terms. The deeper you go into your site the more long tail the keyword phrases you should target. And I think every page on your site except the home page should have a breadcrumb, not just the deep pages. It would look unprofessional and be an inconsistent naviagtion to NOT have breadcrumbs on the first 2 or 3 levels and then suddenly start showing them when you get to level 4 just because you cannot come up with a good <title>. Not only does it eat up space in your <title> element but it ALSO reduces the density of the keyword phrases you WANT to rank for within the title making it harder to rank for those targeted keyword phrases. You cannot 'brand' a site with the <title> that appears in the SERPs if your pages don't rank because you include things like your web site name in the <title>. I think people just like seeing their site name "in lights"... so they want to see it on every page... So when they find their page in the SERPs using site:example.com it's in big blue letters. But it helps very little for a miniscule percentage of searches that people will use to find your site, and hurts you on a very large percentage of searches that people use to find your site. Putting your site name in the <title> is just a bad idea. The page is NOT about "example.com" or "www.example.com" unless it is a review of the site. The only time I include the website name in the <title> is on pages that are specifically about the company like contact us or about us. Otherwise, never. PS: Just curious... Why do you have Big Booster in your title? Do you think the page is about "Big Booster"? The phrase doesn't even appear anywhere in the post... And you are using '|' as your keyword phrase separator and your recommend others use '-'. Interesting on a page that is about the importance of constructing a <title>. Using words in your <title> that don't even appear on the page is again a waste and makes it harder to rank for the real kewyords or keyword phrases that do appear in the content of the page.
One thing I noticed that you might want to change is that you said to use no more than 60 to 65 words. I think you meant to say characters and Google actually allows 70 characters before they truncate the title.
Thanks for all those nice comments. I also learnt a lot from this thread. I will make the adjustments on my post to make it better.
@Web Gazelle- I know that Google allows 70 characters sometimes but I mentioned 60-65 to be on the safer side. And yes, it was a mistake. It will be characters not words. Thanks for pointing out. And also its not just about google but all search engines. @Canonical- Thanks for making those useful comments. #Nomenclature- Well as you said this is a common mistake and more users are likely to search Title tags rather that title element. So, I believe title tags are better. Though I really forgot the term element though but have included it now. #Branding- What I meant by branding was that if your website name appears in the title then people are most likely to notice the name even if they don't click it. Increases web presence I feel. For me, repeating of same phrase does look spammy. Same keyword is good but same phrase is too much in my sense. For the breadcrumbs, I have advised it only if you don't have a specific target. Sure you need a specific target. But still then, if you have an untargeted page, you still need some title. #I have recommended both - and | to break up phrases. Check the post. I agree with you on a lot aspects though. Thanks.
Fully Agree and to stress or reiterate, it should be your key phrase, the targeted ones and restricted to 65 characters ofcourse, So do make a note of the same and using it wisely is very very important. And ofcourse not to spam it as well
Excellent stuff! Its the best technique of on page optimization to optimize title tags. Thanks for sharing the useful information.
@canonical, You have really described it in a nice way especailly use of website name in the title element (oops i was again about to write tag). I have seen lot of websites where they are using website.com along with the targeted keyword.
Take the time to develop your title tags carefully, making sure you have a good keyword foundation from which to draw and that every page has its own unique title reflecting the subject and keyword terms being optimized for.
such a nice tip on Title TAGs. thanks for your sharing and hope you will share more in your threads. i use these tips in my working and really get perfect result. Thanks PlanningYourTax
Hi, I have a information for you my friend which is helpful to you, I have importance of title tags which are as follows: Importance of title tags: Title tags play three very important roles: * First, title tags are very important from the search engine point of view. Search engines place a great deal of weight on these tags (and use these tags to gather information about an website) in comparison to other website features. * Second, many major search engines such as Google and Yahoo! display title tags of a web page as a heading in their SERPs (Search engine results page) followed by a brief description of the content were the keywords appear. * The third most important function of title tags is to help the user in finding out which page he is on. Almost all popular browsers including Microsoft Internet Explorer, display title tags on the top bar as well as the bottom. Firefox 1.0 uses title tags to describe 'tabs'.