Us SEOs really enjoy talking to our online marketing brethren about the latest and greatest in search engine land.
We are an easy crowd. We even have our own social media site.
It turns into a different ball game when you talk to your clients and prospects. They don’t have the time, don’t have the knowledge and perhaps don’t even WANT to know what you have to say. But still, they need to be convinced and educated about the ‘SEO ways’ to turn a website into a success in the SERPs.
So how to do that? Below, I’ve written an example that explains the basic concept of title-tags (a.k.a. meta-titles), how to write them, and some common issues. My goal is not to teach you, valued fellow-SEO, about title-tags, but explain this concept as efficiently as possible to (imaginary) clients.
The story is based on the following ideas:
- start with a visual representation of the goal we want to reach. A graph going up usually does the trick;
- Keep It Simple, Stupid. Clients are NOT interested in theory. They want practical guidelines that actually work for them (‘what’s in it for me’);
- provide examples, examples, examples…
So, here is my ‘title-tags for dummies’ post. Please let me know if you think if it’s incomplete, too difficult, or anything else. Please read it through the eyes of someone who does not know what a title-tag is. Thanks!
Let’s get down to business.
What the bleep is a title-tag?
The title-tag is the most important text on a single webpage when it comes to SEO.
Writing good title-tags is essential for getting results in the search engines:
Does this grab your imagination? This is what happened a while ago with the website of a client of mine. I changed ONE title-tag on their homepage and their visits increased sixfold.
Of course, a lot can be said about this graph. You don’t know the statistics behind the graph, the text of the actual title, the subject of the site, and the competition. It’s just here to prove my point: it pays off to optimize title-tags.
When SEOs are talking about ‘title-tags’ or ‘meta-titles’, they refer to the clickable link text in Search Engines like Google, Yahoo, MSN, or Ask:
Usually you’ll see the title-tag displayed in the blue upper part of your web browser:
But where you’ll ALWAYS find the title, is in the HTML source. It’s the text snippet in the top op the document between the codes <title> and </title>. (Ask your technician to show it if you don’t know).
Why are title-tags important?
The fact alone that search engines display this tiny bit of the text in their results pages, makes that they are important. This piece of text is your web site’s first impression, so you must make it interesting enough for ’searchers’ to visit. But there is more.
We (the SEOs) know that search engines value the text within the title-tag. If a single page is the Financial District in Manhattan, the title-tag is Wall Street. The words you put into a title-tag are very, very valuable.
The way I see it, is that the title-tag (and the meta-description, which is also shown in the search engines) is like an advertisement for a page, comparable to an Adwords ad. It should contain good keywords, but must also entice users to click. A title can only be ‘good’ when it displays both criteria.
How to write title-tags?
I could write a book about this.
But here is a summary of six practical guidelines you should remember. The title-tag:
- starts with the most important keyword;
- contains max. 65 characters (including spaces);
- and a call to action;
- branding names are (usually) mentioned in the end, or not at all;
- besides using keywords, a title tag must be compelling enough to click on;
- writing style depends on competition and goals (aiming towards CTR or ranking).
1. Start with the most important keyword
This tip is the most logical of them all. But that is probably why so many websites keep doing this wrong.
Start with the keyword you want to rank for with the webpage. But which keyword is that? Let’s just say that this keyword (or keyphrase) is unique for the page to which it belongs. All too often the mistake is made that pages try to rank for keywords that are too competitive, too general, or simply not relevant.
2: 65 characters
Why 65 characters?
Because this is (roughly) the amount of characters that are shown in the SERPs. Let’s look at the example of searchengineland.com. Their title-tag consists of 78 characters.
The title is longer than Google shows, because after ‘Marketing &Search’ we see that Google ends it.
This is not a problem. Google & co. will index it and even use the additional characters. You can make it 300 characters long if you want or need to. But it won’t be displayed.
However, keywords that are used in the beginning of the title weigh heavier. That’s why it is usually better to place your ‘ranking keywords’ in the beginning.
3: call-to-action
The ‘call-to-action’ is a request for the reader to act. In this case, to click the link on a search engine results page.
A very easy way to incorporate a call-to-action in a title is by inserting a question mark after the keyphrase:
'Title-tags for dummies?'
I’ve put ‘Title-tags’ first, because that is the best and official name of, well … title-tags :) The part ‘for dummies’ is not meant to rank, but is meant to provoke clicks. ‘How to explain…’ etc. is an actual description of what this article is about. I chose not to, but could have incorporated the synonym ‘meta-title’ somewhere as well.
4: put branding in the back
The homepages of strong brands usually don’t need many keywords:
But for us mere mortals it’s better to place keywords in our title. Even when it is the homepage, the center of our branding. (What keywords are and how to choose them is beyond the scope of this article.)
5: CTR: click through rate
Like I said before: the title is used to rank higher, but also to entice searchers to visit. This is what we also call ‘CTR improvement’. The higher the percentage of people that click (relative to the actual position in the SERPs) the better.
That is why you shouldn’t insert a lot of keywords into a meta-title without thinking about the effect this has on human readers.
6: Check out the competition
It doesn’t hurt to also check out the competition. Are the titles of competitors (in the search engines, not in real life) over optimized? Are they human readable? Spammy? Relevant for the page they refer to?
Knowing this might help to choose for a certain style of title-tag writing. You can stuff the titles with a lot of keywords to gain rankings or make them more enticing to improve CTR. It depends on the competition and the rankings you already have.
Feedback?
I would really like to receive feedback on this. Are the six tips I chose the most important ones, in your opinion? Are they explained the way they should and is it easily understandable? Just drop a comment and let me know :) Thanks!
June 9th, 2008 at 9:54 am
Very useful. After reading this post, being dummies, we decided to change title tags of two websites. Never realised that all our competitors use practically the same two keywords.
June 9th, 2008 at 10:00 am
Now that is the kind of effect this article is supposed to reach Chris! Can you provide me with more details about these two websites and what the changes are?
June 9th, 2008 at 10:36 am
Very nice and simple explanation for the layman.
You should not have trouble getting clients to accept the importance of Title tags.
June 9th, 2008 at 10:40 am
@Mayank: thnx!
June 9th, 2008 at 1:01 pm
We gave up the popular keywords ‘rome appartement’ for a more user-friendly title tag. The website is recently new, due to lots of unique content we rank high in case of a search quiry with three or more words involving ‘rome’. The title tag contained ‘rome appartement’ because we wanted to rank high, like everbody, on these keywords. That seems difficult.
We hope that in the future, having lots of unique content, the more mature site will also rank high on two keywords.
June 9th, 2008 at 1:03 pm
Hi Chris, that sounds good. Just make sure that on the ‘lots of content’ pages there is also a way for visitors to convert into customers
June 9th, 2008 at 9:10 pm
another good shot from the dutch guy with spanish name :)
June 9th, 2008 at 11:54 pm
@Ani: ;) It’s a pity you won’t be in Barcelona next month. We really should drink beers some other day!
June 10th, 2008 at 3:50 am
Very freakin good stuff! :-)
June 10th, 2008 at 4:07 pm
Could not have written this article better myself – all great explanations although I usually keep to 60 Characters to be safe
June 10th, 2008 at 4:12 pm
@Matt: thnx! Actually, I decide on a page to page basis if i’ll use about 50, 65, 80, or perhaps even more characters (but that is not basic seo).
It really depends on the type of queries people use that i want to rank for. It also depends on the competition. For instance, when the competition in the SERPs show highly optimized (or even spammy) titles, i generally chose to display a short, more relaxed and friendly title with a call to action and one keyphrase. I’ll compensate for eventual loss of ranking power with a good link (if available)
June 10th, 2008 at 5:52 pm
Nice post, with good visual examples that help ppl to understand seo tricks over title in a better way!
June 10th, 2008 at 8:30 pm
Great article—never hurts to review such an important aspect of optimization. As competitive as the web can be something this simple that has such a dramatic effect is money in the bank!
June 10th, 2008 at 8:42 pm
hi , can you tell me if i give same title tag more than one post ,
i think serach engine think this is spam . or duplicate content
June 11th, 2008 at 4:39 am
great article, you’ve given me enough info on how to explain basic SEO to my client.
thanks a lot! :)
June 11th, 2008 at 4:32 pm
@Matteo: thnx!
Jeffrey: it sure is, it’s always worthwhile to – from time to time – go back to basics and see if you can still do it ;)
@emjoven: just be sure to refer to me when you do that ;)
June 11th, 2008 at 8:15 pm
Fantastic post! By far the best images and explanation of the title tag for newbies. I will def. be pointing my clients questions toward this post!
June 12th, 2008 at 8:18 am
1. Avoid stuffing of keywords in title; the keywords should be placed in the beginning.
2. Write title keeping in mind the user, what are the users typing in general
3. Write a title such to give the page a heading.
4. Do keyword research before writing title tag, so you can include most important
keyword
5. Write title in a proper sentence.
6. Every page should carry unique title
7. Make your Title tag short and targeted for some particular keyword.
June 13th, 2008 at 4:39 pm
Really great post – and I love the images. Thanks for sending me the link.
June 13th, 2008 at 4:45 pm
@Heather: thnx! Wordpress has scrambled the images, so they’re even prettier in real-life ;)
June 18th, 2008 at 1:30 pm
@ashish choudhary: it usually isn’t a problem (just not optimal), but to give a definitive answer i should take a look at your site. Can you give me an url?
June 18th, 2008 at 1:46 pm
@ashish: You can see if this is causing a problem by going to Google Webmasters Tools. Go to Diagnostics -> Content Analysis
June 28th, 2008 at 8:42 pm
Thanks for the SEO definitions now I’ll be able to understand things better
July 21st, 2008 at 12:55 am
Having read your article , Im in a position at the moment infact I have a meeting tomorrow with a web designer, having read your piece and knowing very little on computers its good. Maybe you might be able to help me , Im wondering is there anyone out there who can ease my mind. Im getting a website designed next week, but really want to make it flash , but have been advised not to. With all these tags. Can I get good rankings with the usage of flash. Is it posible ? explain ?
Many thanks
Lenny
July 21st, 2008 at 11:44 am
Hi Lenny,
there is no easy answer to this question… Flash, in itself, generally doesn’t help you gain better rankings. But for a good webdesigner or SEO, it shouldn’t be a problem (but like you said: you don’t have the knowledge to tell if a webdesigner is any good).
However, a website should never be built completely with flash if search engine rankings are important to you. So my advice is to be on the safe side: do not build a website in flash.
p.s.: this doesn’t mean that this automatically means your website will rank. There is a lot more to SEO than this
August 1st, 2008 at 8:45 am
Hi there,
I have purchased a classifieds type website and in the title section of my header template page I have put my website name. But the problem is, only my website title appears on every page of my website, but does NOT include any search results or other page titles (which I know is bad for SEO)
Is there anything I can put in to my header title to bring up search results in the title tag ?? or what else do I need to do ??
Hope you understand what I am on about cos im well confused with it all
Jason
Please do not make any replys too technical to understand, my brain isnt what it used to be..
August 8th, 2008 at 12:20 pm
Hi Jason, it seems that you need an introduction to SEO. I suggest you take a look at http://www.seobook.com/, which has plenty of content to start learning seo
August 21st, 2008 at 6:54 pm
Nice and to the point post. Im just wondering if using the keyword twice in title tag actually have any effect on search engine possition?
BR,
Johanna
August 23rd, 2008 at 9:39 am
@Johanna Nilsson – Hi Johanna, thnx for dropping by. It is NOT a good idea to repeat keywords in your titles. It may look spammy. Just make sure that every title-tag is unique, that the focus keyword/keyphrase of that page comes first, and that it incites users to click also. It is a good idea though, to use some synonyms in the same title as well.
August 28th, 2008 at 2:05 pm
Short, simple, touching, great post!
Being a musician and constructing a small business in that field brought me to webdsigner’s basics a few years ago. Now I move my site to .EU and try to enhance its abilities “behind and over” the content. Hope to cope with all 7 languages in translating the title and keywords.
April 11th, 2009 at 9:20 pm
After reading this post I realize Ive been neglecting my title tags in the past. Time to start working through my archives…
October 28th, 2009 at 11:27 am
This is a very good article.
Sometimes it’s so difficult to explain to your client things that are obvious for you.
But here it is: 6 points, one, two, three, four, five, six and the client says: “So it really is important, let’s do it”
Thanks a lot!
January 19th, 2010 at 10:19 pm
I’m working on my site title now for my homepage, so this article is extremely useful. Great tips, however, I pause on #4 putting the company title to the back – at least for the home page. The beginning of the title will appear in the users bookmarks and on their task bar or browser tab. For the homepage, shouldn’t you start with the name of the business for this reason? I’d love to hear some feedback on whether or not this is a good idea. Thank!
January 21st, 2010 at 4:28 pm
Hi Wendi thnx 4 dropping by :)
My article was written in a more general way, so for most pages, it is better to display the company name at the end.
For your homepage, it really depends. What are the keyphrases this homepage is intended to rank for? is it the company name, or the name of the most important product? Usually, it is the latter..