How to make title tags optimized for search engines

The good old title tag is one of (if not the) most critical components in website optimization. Using optimized titles can mean the difference between getting a top twenty search ranking, and a top three result. Search engines are very literal, they assume that the title of a page tells you exactly what the page is about. In fact, the title will dictate the page's contents, even before the spider indexes the content!

From my experience, these are the three most common misuses of title tags on the web, and I'll explain each individually:

1. Identical titles 2. Overly branded or descriptive titles 3. Keyword stuffed titles Identical Titles This issue boils down to laziness. Web developers often template the header/footer of a site, and only worry about the body content on each individual page. The unfortunate consequence of this is that the title tag usually gets lumped right in there with the other header pieces. The result is that you'll have a site or an entire section of a site - many very different HTML pages - that are all the same thing according to their title tags.

Let's say you ran a company called ABC Sock Corporation. Your company sells a variety of sock types, sizes and colors. However, every single page on the site has the title tag "ABC Sock Corporation". The result is either a) all pages dumped in the supplemental index or b) lower search results, as the pages aren't as relevant to search queries.

The supplemental index is one of the filters by which Google keeps their search results highly relevant. Pages that appear to contain similar or identical content are removed from the default search results. Searchers click the "Repeat search..." link on the very last results page just to see them. This link is probably clicked (or even seen) by less than 1% of all searchers, so the chance of your page receiving search traffic from supplemental results is very minimal.

The second result is lower search results - they're bad. Enough said.

So invest a little bit of time creating a unique title for each page, that describes the contents of the page. Every template and CMS allows this, so do it! But if you'd like guidelines for generating unique titles, the next two mistakes explained will equip you with all you need to know to create highly optimized title tags!

Overly Branded or Descriptive Titles Many site owners have already taken the time to add unique, descriptive content to each title tag on their website. However, quite often they add in a bit of extra description. For example, ABC Sock Corporation's page offering white tennis socks has the title "The largest online selection of white tennis socks | ABC Sock Corporation". This presents two potential problems:

1. No one searches for "The largest online selection of white tennis socks", they just search for "white tennis socks".

2. Adding the "| ABC Sock Corporation" can result in a lower relevance than just "red pumps" by search engines, and therefore result in slightly lower ranking.

Remember that a title tag is not an ad - its purpose is not to sell. It just needs to match the searcher's query, that's all they want. So, in that case, a title tag of "White tennis socks" would be far more effective, and receive more clicks.

As for the second issue, well, that's a little tougher. Many companies will be adamant about keeping their business name in the titles, for branding purposes. Of course, you can also incorporate the company name into the meta description, and it will still be shown on search results pages. However, in some cases, it's advantageous to keep the company name in the title, because then it gets added to bookmarks and such. So, there's no absolutely definitive answer! I end up using just search-targeted terms for titles on some pages, but on tutorials I add in the company name, as they're more likely to be bookmarked, and they receive a high enough search result anyways. It just requires some thought and testing to find the right balance.

Keyword Stuffed Titles Sadly, I often find titles that have been stuffed with keywords and phrases. What makes this so sad is that it's often the result of hiring a low quality SEO 'professional' to optimize the site. So, you'll find title tags like: "Red socks, red tennis socks, red tube socks, red shoes, blue socks, etc | ABC Sock Corporation".

So again, no one is going to search on such a ridiculously long search phrase. Your title tag should contain the primary phrase that you're targeting with that page. In fact, it's pretty clear that you're trying to 'cheat' for multiple terms, and Search Engines do their best to keep cheaters from prospering. So, expect low search results with such a title. Simply put - keep them focused, you'll have better results.

Conclusion Yes, it's time-consuming work to go through your entire site and fix each and every title tag. But it's really only a pain the first time, and it's well worth it! Once you see the results, you'll be obsessed with tweaking. I still have improvements to make on this very site, and will constantly be monitoring my web analytics reports & SERPs to see where I need to tweak a title!

For more SEO tips, visit my SEO Toronto blog. Also, feel free to ask any questions you may have regarding on-site optimization.

How to make title tags optimized for search engines - To learn more about this author, visit Justin Cook's Website.

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